Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I thought her speech was very honest and informative.

I wish to convey some positive news about the way we treat people with disabilities. There are 12,700 people with autism and learning disabilities in the education system and €9.2 billion was put into education funding in budget 2022 with additional special education assistants and teachers.

Obviously there are a lot more obstacles for pupils and teachers when it comes to deciding who goes into these special classes and gets special needs assistance, so there has to be a framework. I do not think these services should be part of the Department of Health but done in conjunction with the Department of Education because they are too important. In general, taking children out of school or crèche environments to go to therapies is a waste of time and eats into their educational needs.

I thank the Government colleagues of the Minister of State, namely, the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, and the Minister of State at the Department of Education, Deputy Madigan, for supporting the creation of Our Lady of Hope School, on which I and Senator Seery Kearney worked.

There is some hope in terms of the Government listening to parents, and that should be noted. Unfortunately, however, and I have raised this many times, there is a major issue with therapies and that is where we are at today. The Minister of State hit the nail on the head. The issue is recruitment and retention. We are short 400 staff and 40% of the current staff are out sick.

Is an assessment of needs approach the way forward? Ultimately, parents just want therapy. They do not want to wait three years for an assessment of needs but want their child to start occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, physiotherapy or psychology services immediately. We need a discussion. Are we wasting time getting a complex assessment of needs report or should we just jump into providing therapies for children? Parents want their children to receive therapies and parents want to learn early doors how to support their children in a home environment.

As many Senators have pointed out in the debate, parents who can afford to pay for therapies must pay €60 for 30 minutes and sometimes they must pay that sum twice a week for some children, which is a huge amount of money. It is so unfair because the children whose parents cannot afford to pay for therapies are not getting the early intervention while those who can are. They are doing it by borrowing from family members and taking out loans. Some parents have the opportunity to do this while others simply do not, rely on the State and have been very let down by it. We hear all the time that early intervention is key. Imagine the guilt of a parent who just cannot get that early intervention for his or her child. Senator Seery Kearney said that some people have a mask, so to speak, and drop the mask on certain occasions. The State is not giving our children these therapies just so that they can build up a really good mask and look like they do not have whatever complex needs or disability they have.

The Mori community in New Zealand has a beautiful word for autism. It is Takiwtanga and means in his or her own time and space. It is a lovely way to characterise someone with autism or additional sensory needs. It is incumbent on us to learn a little bit more about autism. We are all learning about it but there is so much more we need to understand as parents, legislators and caregivers.

As I said at the beginning, all services like occupational therapy and speech and language therapy should be delivered in preschool and education settings. The idea of parents taking their children out of an education setting in the middle of a school day to attend a treatment session that lasts half an hour is nonsensical. It is a damning indictment of the system. It is also wrong that all of this money is spent on the assessment of needs when there are no therapies at the end.

I cannot even look at the report that has been circulated because it is so upsetting. Both I and Senator Seery Kearney live and work in community healthcare organisation, CHO, 7. The Department has produced statistics, and I know the Minister of State is sickened by them, that only 10% of people have commenced a stage 2 assessment and no one completed a full assessment in CHO 7 in the last quarter of 2021. No assessments are being made and no therapies are being delivered in CHO 7. Imagine how guilty the parents feel about being unable to access therapies for their children. I find it hard to fathom such a situation and believe we need to do a lot more. We need to analyse the viability of the assessment of needs framework given we do not have the staff to complete therapies. Parents just want therapies and to learn how to help their children.

The Minister of State is the woman for this job because she has invested a lot of time and energy and helped to clear pathways. It seems she is swimming up current so she must be frustrated by this situation. I commend her on doing great research on this issue and meeting many families. However, we need to consider the assessment of needs in a different way because it does not work.