Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I echo the comments of the Members about the excellent job the Minister of State is doing, in which I fully support her. I look forward to working with her. I have frequently spoken to her about autism services. She is planning to complete a non-statutory report into autism services. When the Oireachtas committee which we discussed is established in the near future, I look forward to speaking to NGOs and families to feed into that report and finally deliver for those families.

I know this relates more to special education. I am concerned at a media report today that only one in five students from special schools accessed the July provision this year. This needs to be looked at and we need to ensure it does not happen again.The progress in disability services policy states that the aim is for children to receive health services they need as close to their home and school as possible. That is something that I fully believe in, which is the whole-school inclusion model that the Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, is working on and which was trialled in the CHO 7 area and was very successful there. That is the model we need to invest in further and to progress.

The policy also states a children's disability network team of health professionals needs to look after the children. That is where we have a serious problem, which is the actual number of health professionals, something I believe the Minister of State referred at the start, specifically the shortage of them. The €7.8 million that was put aside for this in the budget had to be fought hard for by the Minister of State. In the greater scale of things, where we talk about delivering projects throughout the country that cost hundreds of millions of euros, it is disappointing we can only find €7.8 million to deal with the backlog we have. We owe it to the children to give them every opportunity in life and to support them.

I spoke about the 1916 Proclamation before. It is 105 years since the Proclamation was read out and we need seriously to ask the question whether we are cherishing all of the children of the nation equally. I think we are not.

More specifically, I want to ask a number of questions on my own area. I spoke about the lack of people in positions, in particular in the Phoenix Care Centre in Longford, where there is a waiting list of more than 600 children. My understanding as of this week is we are going to lose three speech and language therapists, one occupational therapist, OT, one physiotherapist and one psychologist and we already have 600 people on a waiting list. I ask if the Minister of State or her officials could come back to me with a reply as to when these positions are going to be filled and this waiting list will be tackled.

I also ask in respect of St. Christopher’s Special School, which is a school I know the Minister of State knows well and worked hard to provide funding for the staff there. The fact is we have a state-of-the-art school yet we have no access to speech therapy in that school where we have two classrooms. I ask that a proper assessment be done for the students in St. Christopher’s and that a proper programme be put in place for the special needs assistants, SNAs, who are working there and are prepared to do this work. I would greatly appreciate it if the Minister of State could come back to me with replies on these issues.

I re-emphasise what I said at the beginning that I have full faith the Minister of State will deliver for people with disabilities.