Mary Seery Kearney (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is very welcome. It is always a great joy to see her, work with her and admire the great job she is doing. She is exceptional in her role.

While I very much respect the vast experience of my colleague Senator Conway, I understand why this has taken time. When we go through the sheer breadth of authorities that needed to move into the other Department, and while I am delighted to be able to call on HIQA and to make demands of the HSE in terms of accountability and requesting support, I can understand how it is so in depth.

The natural place for disabilities is in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. The Minister of State very graciously came before the joint committee when she was only a short while in the job and had no obligation to do so. From day one, she has had a great relationship with the committee. The joint committee and the Joint Committee on Disability Matters have received reports about the cost and experiences of disability that show the intersectionality in terms of the social, demographic and geographical challenges that arise. We also see intersectionality within marginalised groups and gender and the challenge of that. Having equality, integration and disability under the same roof, so to speak, makes absolute sense to make sure there is progress.

We had a children's committee meeting that involved the HSE and the Ombudsman for Children, Dr. Niall Muldoon. It was a very robust and fruitful three hours. Everybody was clearly very passionate about and committed to making sure people with disabilities live their best lives. What also came across very clearly was the challenges within that. While the HSE was criticised for naming the issues without necessarily having a clear plan of action, I also heard about intentions and the considerable amount of work ongoing in that regard. The Minister of State has prompted an honesty in the debate in meetings she has facilitated recently that I have also heard. It is very important we have this coming together of understanding that children have a right to services and to access them in a timely manner.

In my constituency in Dublin South-Central, in particular, there is a massive gap in service provision which comes down to the issue of vacancies. Children have had diagnoses of being on the autism spectrum and having a disorder such as a developmental co-ordination disorder. There have been numerous dual diagnoses, and dual does not even capture the extent of it. They may have been born in 2013 and still not have received services.

There is a need for something to happen urgently. My concern in the moving over is to ensure the Minister of State has the budget. We have the passion and the Minister of State has the leadership. She recently broke down her budget, and while it seemed vast, a figure of in excess of €1 billion was suggested yesterday as the shortfall in funding in terms of the personnel and roll-out of services we would need. I call on the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, to fight hard and I will support him to fight hard to ensure the Department has an adequate budget to ensure that, when accountability is called for, there is no impediment to ensuring a roll-out, especially as we ratify the optional protocol and do all of that within the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD.

I want to end by thanking the Minister of State very sincerely.This week we will visit WALK and I am really looking forward to it. There is no doubt the Minister of State will be a champion there. I believe that tomorrow there will be a documentary or interview with families who have come from Ukraine and are being serviced by WALK and its fantastic work in Drimnagh and Walkinstown. We will meet them there. The passage of those families, which will be the beginning of a lot more to come, was eased by the work and intervention of the Minister of State and my own intervention. We worked very well. We had late-night calls last Friday night. There is something of a spontaneous response and it is led by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. A powerful amount of work is being done and is planned to be done. I thank the Minister of State very sincerely for her work in this regard.