Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, for coming to the House and for making herself available for this important question. As the Minister of State knows only too well, the HSE is currently rolling out its reconfiguration of disability services for children and it hopes to complete the centralisation of services July of this year. I understand that when there are waiting lists as long as 25,000, and indeed a family in my area has been waiting for four and a half years for access to therapies, the HSE has to do something. When a school such as the Holy Family School for the Deaf in Cabra is told that it is to lose its on-site specialist speech and language therapy service to resource the development of another service, then the children, the parents, the staff and the principal all deserve answers as to why they are to lose their service.

My question is very much about the research, the evidence-based policy and the clinical framework that says it is better for children to access services in the community, which in reality is effectively them joining a long queue along with many other children in the community, when they already have timely access to a vital service within their school environment. A report produced by the HSE in 2017 related to the national advisory group on specialist services for deaf children. There were nine specific recommendations in the report but it has been there for more than three years at this stage and is gathering dust. The recommendations have been actively ignored by the HSE's current reconfiguration plan for disability services for children. Where is the leading role for specialist deaf services? Where are the specialist mental health services for children who are deaf and their families? Where is the automatic referral for those with severe or profound hearing loss? Where is the expertise in training within primary healthcare and within the community-based teams for children who are deaf or hard of hearing?

This school deserves to hear the rationale as to why it is losing its service. It seems like a retrograde step. The impact of this on the children in the school will include lost days out of school. Children come from as far as Monaghan, Longford, Meath and Kildare, as the Minister of State knows only too well. What are we saying to them with regard to their right to access a comprehensive and full education in this State that they must stay at home to access a service where they reside and not go to school on those days? It is shameful we would have to tell them to miss school. It is about providing a consistent support service to them. Any family that has a child with a disability will say that it has to be consistent as opposed to meeting a different clinician or therapist on each day. There is also a cost to the HSE.

In my conversations with the Minister of State on this I know she is concerned. The Taoiseach has also spoken publicly about this. The school and I received correspondence from the HSE on Wednesday. It was a series of justifications for why it is doing this, which is nothing short of shameful. The HSE has sought to rely on the Ombudsman's report on unmet health needs for children with disabilities. The HSE is relying on that report to justify what it is doing.It is saying that the report states that we need to review the access path and criteria for accessing services. Is the HSE saying that the children in the Holy Family School for the Deaf do not currently need access to speech and language therapy services? That is what it said in its letter. I want to hear the HSE's justification. If this goes through, it will be a hugely retrograde step for the children in this school. I thank the Minister of State for coming into the House.