Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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76. To ask the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth the steps she is taking to ensure that children with disabilities receive early intervention and treatment; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [32482/25]

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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Early intervention is critical. I want to ask about CDNT vacancies. What is the number of vacancies? What is the percentage of vacant posts throughout the CDNT network? What are the long-term and short-term strategies to address recruitment issues?

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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The Government recognises the importance of early intervention for children with disabilities and ensuring they receive the right services at the right time. Under the programme for Government, we are committed to ensuring children and their families who need early intervention and therapy input can access it in a timely way.

The key vehicle for change and improvement is the roadmap for service improvement for disability services for children and young people. The implementation of this roadmap is well under way and will continue until 2026. The roadmap contains an important set of actions that, collectively, will enhance children’s disability services in Ireland. They include significant measures to integrate and improve access to services, expand the workforce and advance better communication and engagement with families. A key part of this work has been the improvement of access to services through the children’s disability network teams, CDNTs. They are providing supports and services to more than 43,000 children.

I fully acknowledge that there is still a lot more to do. Recruitment and retention of health and social care professionals is the most significant challenge and work is ongoing to increase staffing levels. The HSE has advised that the most recent CDNT workforce survey available was conducted in April. This survey demonstrates an overall national increase of an additional 8% in staffing in CDNTs, compared with the workforce at the review in October 2024. This brings the total number of whole-time equivalents to 2,009. The Department is working with the HSE to introduce specific recruitment and retention incentives for therapists to work in CDNTs, including a sponsorship initiative and facilitating direct access for funded agencies to existing professional panels.

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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How many vacancies do we have in the CDNTs? What is the number? What is the percentage? What are the strategies on this? The Minister of State alluded earlier to the strategy being recruitment in secondary schools. Am I right in saying this? Are we to believe the crisis will not be solved for a number of years? What are we doing to entice the wonderful graduates in this field who are now in Australia, Canada and the UAE? What strategy does the Minister of State have in place to bring these people home? This is the quickest way to unlock the crisis.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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We are doing a number of things in recruitment and retention. We have bursaries in place. We are opening up HSE panels. We have HSE advertising streams. We also have a number of fairs, including one in May where one of the top priorities was to recruit people and to introduce people to social care therapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. We have 150 extra therapists going through our third level institutions and there will be more again this year. We are looking at therapy assistants. We have therapists going into our special schools. We also have incentives for therapists to work in our CDNTs. We have more than €10 million in funding. Additional funding has been made available by the Government for children's services. This funding focuses on recruiting various positions in CDNTs, including 20 senior therapists, 20 staff grade posts, 20 health and social care assistant posts and 15 clinical training posts. Measures are also being taken to assist with sustainably addressing the backlog in the assessment of needs.

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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I have to say if I were a parent listening to this I would be incredibly frustrated. The Minister of State has, perhaps, a mid- to long-term plan but very little to alleviate the crisis today. There is a window of opportunity. These children will miss their targets. They will be significantly disadvantaged. For some it will mean the difference between being able to live independently or not. We have many wonderful professionals abroad. They are living abroad for many reasons. The Minister of State has not answered the question so I assume she has no plan to bring them home.

I will give an example. I spoke to a number of psychologists who had to leave this country to get training because there were not enough assistant psychologists posts available. These people are highly educated. They completed their doctorates in places such as Britain. The HSE does not have a clear pathway to bring these people home. One psychologist has been trying to work in the HSE for more than a year and has been met with bureaucracy and red tape.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agat.

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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This is the type of proactive solution and policy I want the Minister of State to address. These are wonderful Irish graduates-----

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agat a Theachta.

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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-----some of whom graduated with their basic degree in Ireland. They went away for doctoral training.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agat a Theachta.

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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The HSE is not welcoming them home. Meanwhile we have a crisis today.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I assure Deputy Lawless that absolutely everything is being done. What is happening now is what I have just listed out. We also have domestic and international recruitment drives happening all the time, as we speak. We also have an expedited CORU registration process from this year. This is specifically for people who may have trained abroad and want to come here to work. We want to expedite this process. It has already been expedited. We are looking at absolutely everything. If there are particular cases, and Deputy Lawless is aware of particular people who are having issues with coming home or registering, my door is open. I absolutely assure him from a Government point of view there is a Cabinet committee that meets very regularly on recruitment drives and higher education. In-school therapists will be in place in September. The programme has been up and running since the Minister and I were in the Department of Education. We want to roll this out. It is all about making sure that children and adults have access to therapists. We know there is big demand. We are lucky to have full employment in the country. With that comes these issues. Absolutely everything is being thrown at this. If Deputy Lawless has suggestions on what we can do, my door is open.

Paul Lawless (Mayo, Aontú)
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Will the Minister engage with me on this?

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Lawless can come back to me afterwards.