Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, to the House. I thank her for her work, commitment and engagement. While my contribution will be critical it will not be critical of the Minister of State and I want to make this quite clear at the beginning. This is very important legislation. The Minister of State to her credit deserves our support for bringing it forward and implementing it. The challenges we face in the provision of services for people with disabilities is gargantuan. I say this as somebody who has years of experience and who is very committed to and works closely with a number of organisations in the provision of services and specialist community-based delivery of services.

The conundrum we all face is contained in the legislation and in the remarks of the Minister of State. The transfer to specialist community-based disability services is something we all support. The problem is that the multi-sectoral plan is not working to its full potential despite the best efforts of the Minister of State. In the most recent budget we had the highest ever provision for these services. I do not believe there is a coherent funding strategy once it leaves the Minister of State. There is far too much fragmentation in the provision of adult and child services, such as with regard to respite care and developing housing needs. In the provision of services there needs to be better and more strategic investment by the HSE.

The interdepartmental approach is not working. While the functional movement is technical, this is about the provision of services for people who need them. We very much welcome the young boys and girls in the Gallery. Every one of those children has the potential to reach their full capacity. This is part of our difficulty. Under section 29 the Minister has the power to determine capital funding. We all think this is great. Then we go back to the memorandum of explanation and we see the power to spend money is being retained by the HSE following the transfer.

I have known the Minister of State since she has come to the Oireachtas. I have great time for her. Yesterday, we announced new special education schools in Dublin and Cork. Senator Seery Kearney, to be fair, championed them in her area as I did in my area. Take, for example, a child living in Waterfall in Cork city who is to go to a new school place that has been announced in Rochestown. It is brilliant that a new school has been announced but how is the child to get to the school? Where is the respite care?Where are the supports built around that? Therein lies our problem. We announce places and funding, but we do not put in place the roadmap to help children and their families to get to that point. In fairness to the Minister of State, and I am not being patronising, every time she speaks at a conference or event on disability, she makes a comment about being comprehensive in this regard. I do not have confidence, however, in the people in the HSE to deliver on this aim. I am being critical from experience.

We have a deficit of school places and of respite care. The issue of education and respite transport is a circle, with the most important part, the child or young adult, in the middle. Planning is needed in the community. I wonder if we have the capacity in the community to deliver in respect of the whole issue of skill sets, respite care and respite beds. I say that because one of the hardest, most difficult and most harrowing parts of our job is to meet parents who are crying out for respite care because they are at their wits' end and cannot continue to give the care to their loved ones that they are providing.

While this legislation is deemed technical, it is not. I hope the Minister of State will take my comments in the spirit they are intended. I love these objectives given in the explanatory memo regarding ministerial powers in respect of "the issuing of directions to the HSE", [the] "Accountability of the HSE board" and the "Corporate plan, service plan capital plan". In many cases, however, the corporate plan and the capital plan appear nearly a year later and that means organisations are working retrospectively.

I will work with the Minister of State. I admire her tenacity because everything she has done and said thus far has been very progressive, but the problem lies with the whole issue of the delivery by the HSE on the ground. Let us look at the Cope Foundation in Cork, for example. It is launching a major recruitment campaign to hire staff because it cannot get any. I wish the Minister of State well because this is important legislation. We need to get it delivered and we must get it done in a manner that is coherent on behalf of the people who need it.