Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, to the House. This matter concerns the need for the Minster for Health and Children and the Health Service Executive, HSE, to provide adequate funding to the service providers, the Brothers of Charity, in Ballinasloe for the delivery of a properly resourced service to persons with disabilities, both adults and children, who are experiencing severe curtailment of their services.

The Brothers of Charity and the Galway County Association have been the service providers for both children and adults with disabilities in County Galway for many years. The €60 million provided is broken down on a 40-20 basis between them but most of the public representatives in the east Galway area were called to a crisis meeting in Ballinasloe recently where the Ballinasloe Advocates, a voluntary organisation made up mainly of parents and siblings of people with disabilities of one kind or another, outlined the crisis facing them in the Ballinasloe area. The provision of services is now at crisis point. The reserves that are held to deal with a crisis, as inevitably happens at some time in the year to some family, will be exhausted within the near future. Of the new moneys that are supposed to be provided — €10 million nationally — Galway would be entitled to about €1 million of that on the basis of population and the increasing numbers of people identified with special needs in this area. That money has not been released by the HSE. I ask the Minister of State to ensure that either he or the Minister, Deputy Harney, would instruct the HSE to provide as a matter of urgency the additional funding due to the people in Galway to allow them continue to provide reasonable standards for the people with disabilities in the Ballinasloe area.

Everybody realises the value for money being provided by the service providers in the area. In fact, they are providing services to many more people than those for whom they are funded through the voluntary contributions made by people in the county and through fund-raising and otherwise. One must realise that the 2006 new moneys provide only 13.75 residential places for 131 unmet needs; only 28.6 day places for 46 unmet needs; and only 4.4 residential support places for 161 unmet needs. The majority of those are spread throughout the county and a great proportion of them are within the Ballinasloe service providers area. That demands an urgent response from the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Harney, with regard to the delivery of services.

Another matter that must be examined clearly is that under the old health board system, the resources delivered in the former Western Health Board area were provided at a ratio of 3:2:1 to counties Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, respectively. Given the high population in County Galway and Galway city relative to the other two counties, this breakdown was totally unsuitable and was obviously unbalanced. Thus, County Roscommon's absolute needs are met, whereas that is not the case in County Galway. Moreover, the Government's disbursement figures are based on the 2002 census. However, four years have passed and the population has increased considerably, particularly in County Galway and Galway city. In addition, there is greater recognition of the needs of younger and elderly people who may not have been identified at an early stage heretofore. It is known that early intervention is of the utmost importance for many people with special educational needs. The Brothers of Charity should be able to provide such services to such people.

At present in County Galway, a total of 1,173 people — many of whom are in Ballinasloe — are on waiting lists for therapies of one kind or other. Several children have passed through the services provided by the Brothers of Charity and the Galway County Association and have returned to mainstream education, only to find that speech therapy is unavailable in many rural schools. No speech therapists are available to travel to such areas and the same is true for other service providers.

Hence, such pupils now lack these services. They are in mainstream education and last May, many of them were told they would not have an assessment until next September. How can this be reconciled with the statement of the former Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Martin, on 5 November 1998, which is on the minds of all who have children with special needs? He asserted that the special needs sector would not want, geographical location would not be a problem and such children would have a right to their needs. In other words, they would have the right to their particular need and it would not be subject to resources. When the Minister of the day was questioned regarding resources, he made assurances they would be provided and that there would be no shortage of money in this area. However, not only is there a shortage of money to keep such services in place at present, there is also a shortage of staff.

I wish to place a statement on the record.