Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to outline the key priorities for me as Minister of State with responsibility for disability over the next number of years. This Government is absolutely committed to improving services for people with disabilities and ensuring that they can live full lives with the same rights and access to services, education, transport, culture, sport and careers, and have the means to live independently, as all other citizens do.

I have made it a priority to visit services, meet people with disabilities and sit down with representatives of advocacy groups to hear their views on what is working well and what needs to be improved. There are wonderful examples of services that help to transform lives. There are also examples of services that need additional support and bolstering. There is no shortage of good ideas about what can and must be done, but it is only by tapping into the lived experience of people with disabilities that will we understand what is happening on the ground, which will help us to deliver the reforms needed to improve services and deliver on our ambition.

I and my colleagues want to deliver change that will have a real impact, as well as helping to oversee reform in this sector. For example, we want to ensure that a person using a wheelchair who uses public transport can travel seamlessly from his or her home to a bus stop or train station. I want to examine the expansion of the role of access officers in the public sector to ensure services such as libraries are accessible and people with disabilities are not prevented from attending and enjoying concerts and festivals. I wish to create a mechanism to allow public bodies to share best practice and I want to help people with disabilities to get into employment.

My Government colleagues and I are committed to ensuring that each Department and the local authority sector work together to address the various barriers that prevent people with disabilities from fully engaging in society. While much work has been done to deliver more services on the ground, the Government is acutely aware of the need to do more. We are ambitious to deliver real change for those living with disabilities, including their families, carers and those working in the sector, who for far too long have felt unseen and unheard.

Given the significant proportion of the population who experience disability, we must ensure that public services are planned, delivered and maintained in a way that responds to the needs of those who use them. The degree to which people with disabilities will engage with public bodies and Departments over their lifetime is considerable. As such, enhancing services and improving the lives of people with disabilities requires an all-of-government approach, which reflects the mainstream first principle that underpins the State’s response to the needs of people with disabilities. I assure the House that in my role as Minister of State, I will be in regular contact with my ministerial colleagues and their Departments to ensure they act upon their commitments in this space in a meaningful and tangible way.

The formation of a new disability unit in the Department of An Taoiseach is crucial to ensuring we achieve service improvements across all aspects of disability services, whether it be provision of therapies, access to employment and education, suitable housing or other public services. This new unit will ensure there is a central focus to support co-ordination across all Departments, and that all Departments deliver on their commitments.

This Government is backing up our ambition through provision of additional funding. A total of €3.2 billion has been allocated for HSE disability services in budget 2025, which is an increase of 11.6% on 2024 and an overall increase of €1.2 billion since 2020. While this is a significant increase in funding, I appreciate that the sector faces significant pressures. I look forward to tackling these pressures over the next number of years, particularly during the annual Estimates process. The additional funding of €333 million allocated in budget 2025 represents the largest ever increase in the disability services budget. Some €290 million has been allocated in existing level-of-service funding, which recognises those challenges that prevail in the sector, including the increased cost of service provision, pay cost pressures and service provider sustainability, while also providing for service expansion in line with demographic growth. A further €39 million has been allocated for new development measures to build on the service expansion achieved in 2024. In addition, the capital allocation for disability services will increase by €4 million to €27 million this year to support much-needed infrastructure development across respite, day services and children's services. I have also asked my Department to engage with the HSE in advance of the review of the national development plan to ensure that capital projects are identified for inclusion over the coming years.

The Government is committed to ensuring appropriate funding is available and provided to voluntary organisations to enable them to deliver quality services on an equitable basis throughout the country. However, I am acutely aware of the ongoing funding, operational and governance challenges faced by many disability service providers. The largest share of the budget for disability services - 72% - goes to voluntary service providers. Even with significant year-on-year increases in funding over recent years, there is a need to better understand and ultimately address the systemic sustainability and stability challenges being experienced by disability organisations across the sector. We will continue to work together to understand the cost of services and, more importantly, the factors driving the costs, to ensure that we can make strong data-driven cases for increased investment in the sector.

The Department and the HSE are committed to working with key stakeholders to identify, assess and address constraints to create a more effective and sustainable disability sector. Our priority is to provide equitable access to quality services for persons with disability in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD, commitments, delivery of the disability action plan, and the progressing disability services, PDS, roadmap 2023-2026. We want to ensure that we support progressive improvements in the sector. Partnership with the sector will be a significant focus to ensure we deliver on our commitments.

I am all too aware of the challenges facing the sector when it comes to the recruitment and retention of staff. A key focus for the Government will be to fill vacancies within the 93 children's disability network teams, CDNTs. Progress is being made in this regard, with the workforce increasing by 17% from October 2023 to October 2024, which is an increase of 272 whole-time-equivalent staff. We will build on this progress, including through the development of a dedicated disability workforce strategy that will be progressed this year. I recognise the significant challenges families face in accessing assessments of need, and with the assessment process itself, resulting in unacceptable delays for children and their families. We are committed to addressing that this year, in part through the continuation of the assessment of need waiting list initiative, which enables the procurement of private assessments for long-waiting families. Part of this effort to improve wait times is the allocation of €10 million in funding this year to deliver approximately 2,850 assessments of need and to allow for additional capacity in the assessment teams in the form of assessment and liaison officers. Nevertheless, I am very conscious that more work needs to be done in this specific area.

The programme for Government commits to doubling the number of college places available for speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, dieticians, psychologists, social workers and others. The onus is on those of us in government to ensure that we do everything we can to encourage these talented professionals into the sector.

I welcome the unprecedented agreement that was reached at the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, last month. The agreement between Departments and unions includes funding for a 9.25% pay increase for more than 20,000 workers in community and voluntary health and social care organisations. It recognises that staff should be fairly paid for the vital work they do, and crucially, the proposed agreement includes an automatic link to future public sector pay agreements for these workers. I understand that ICTU unions are balloting their members with a view to formalising the agreement and I am hopeful a positive outcome will be communicated in the coming weeks.

Strong policy is vital to fulfilling Government commitments. In this spirit, I am pleased to say that the national disability strategy is at an advanced stage and that publication is expected in a matter of months. I am working closely with the Minister, Deputy Foley, on delivering on the ambition of the Action Plan for Disability Services 2024-2026. We have set ambitious targets in the plan to provide for unmet need and demographic change. This ambition is important to generate commitment to the vision we have for disability services in Ireland.

Respite plays a crucial role in the overall disability sector, providing much-needed support to families and carers. We are committed to the continued expansion of respite services including overnight respite services and alternative respite such as in-home respite, after-school and day respite programmes as well as host families and summer programmes. This is just a snapshot of the planned work the Government will be undertaking in the disability sector. Our commitment to enhancing service provision and improving the lives of people with disabilities is clearly present and, importantly, backed by funding. I really look forward to working with colleagues in the Seanad. My door is open. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas, as I have said from the start, and I welcome the engagement here this evening.