Results 4,921-4,940 of 11,744 for speaker:Roderic O'Gorman

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Healthcare Policy (9 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: This is a matter for my cabinet colleague, the Minister for Health.

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Early Childhood Care and Education (9 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: My Department has made extensive provision to support children with additional needs in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Programme. The Access and Inclusion Model (AIM), which is a model of supports designed to ensure that children with disabilities can access ECCE. Its goal is to empower pre-school providers to deliver an inclusive pre-school experience, ensuring that every...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Early Childhood Care and Education (9 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: Following my announcement of the hot meals pilot scheme in November 2022, my Department have collaborated with Pobal to recruit nine services as pilot sites to examine the delivery of an enhanced food offer in sessional pre-school and part-time services. Given that a large number of settings including all full-day care services already provide this service, the aim of this pilot is to provide...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Unaccompanied Minors and Separated Children (9 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: Statutory and operational responsibility for the delivery of child protection and welfare services is a matter for Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. The Deputy is seeking information in relation to an operational matter for Tusla. Consequently, I have referred the matter to Tusla, and requested that a direct response be provided to the Deputy.

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Registration of Births (9 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: Information and Tracing services, as provided for under the Act, opened to applications on 3rd October 2022. As of 7th February, a total of 6,744 applications for information have been received by the Child and Family Agency, Tusla and the Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI), in addition to 3,080 applications for tracing services and 3,031 preferences registered to the Contact Preference...

Written Answers — Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth: Childcare Services (9 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: As the Deputy will be aware, Budget 2023 has introduced a major reform to the National Childcare Scheme (NCS) from January 2023, which will substantially improve the affordability of early learning and childcare for families. From 2 January, all families accessing registered early learning and childcare receive a minimum hourly NCS subsidy of €1.40. With the previous minimum...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Revised Estimates for my Department for 2023, including that of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. As members will have seen from the briefing material provided last week, my Department is projected to spend €3.173 billion on current expenditure and €103 million on capital expenditure during 2023. This represents an...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: I thank the Deputy. I agree and share, as I am sure all Deputies do, his concern regarding the rhetoric we have seen in recent weeks and months. It comes from a small group in society but one that is vocal and uses online techniques to organise and perhaps amplify its voice more than may be representative. It is, however, a voice that is also dangerous and makes threats to elected...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: There are two key areas where we are providing in this year's Estimates for the response and action plan the Government is bringing forward, namely, subhead C9, which I will speak about in a moment, and subhead C8. Subhead C8 makes provision for €9.1 million. The key element of that is meeting the costs of the Tuam agency that is currently being established. The process for...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: The design of the scheme was based on the idea of a generalised payment to avoid survivors having to prove individualised experiences such as forced participation in a vaccine trial. It is explicitly to avoid the need to go towards a testimony-based approach that the generalised payment based on the length of time spent in one of these institutions was adopted.

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: I do not think it did. The DSS was established a number of years ago and so it is an organisation that exists. Obviously, it has not been undertaking the very significant range of tasks set out for it within the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act. It will now be undertaking the appointment of decision supporters. Where complaints are made, it will be looking at those complaints. Its...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: The Deputy asked about recruitment, specifically on the disability side of things. The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I are looking forward to the final transfer of responsibility for the HSE's community-based disability services on 1 March. I met the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and officials to discuss that just prior to this meeting. Obviously, there are many issues...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: That is very good. I am glad it has been seen to deliver in Carlow. In terms of the targeted stream for the disadvantaged, that is something my Department is very clear it wants to advance. That is not provided for in this year's Estimate so it is something we will look to bring forward in budget 2024. There is a piece of work being undertaken by my Department to ascertain how exactly...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: My understanding from the interdepartmental group report, which came out in mid-2021, and my recollection, is that the cost of making provision for payments at a similar rate to people who were in institutions for less than six months as a child would have been an additional €300 million. That would have brought the overall cost of the scheme to €1.1 billion. If an enhanced...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: As the Deputy knows, the legislation on which the institutional payment scheme will be based is working its way through the Dáil at the moment and subsequently will have to go through the Seanad. When my Department engaged with the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform during our work on budget 2023, it indicated that the costings it would...

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: There will. We are working as quickly as possible to pass the legislation and undertake the administrative work to support the scheme. Obviously the legislation needs to be passed to support the scheme but we are working to get that done.

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: Yes, they can.

Select Committee on Children and Youth Affairs: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (Revised)
Vote 25 - Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (Revised) (8 Feb 2023)

Roderic O'Gorman: Additional staff will be necessary within the Department to oversee the scheme. An IT infrastructure will have to be created to support the application process. We will undertake an information campaign to make people aware of their rights. As the Deputy knows, we undertook a significant information campaign on foot of the Birth Information and Tracing Act 2022. It has come up in...