Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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10. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on children, education and disability will meet next. [29522/24]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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11. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on children, education and disability will meet next. [29525/24]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 and 11 together.

The Cabinet committee on children and education and disability oversees programme for Government commitments relating to children, education and disability and receives detailed reports on identified policy areas such as child poverty and well-being, local area disadvantage and the reform of our disability services. In addition to the meetings of the full Cabinet and of Cabinet committees, I meet Ministers on an individual basis to focus on different issues. The committee has a particular focus on the forthcoming national disability strategy. This is an important moment because it will set out the blueprint for further realisation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We have also asked the committee to focus on the ratification of the optional protocol to that convention as well, which I would like to see happen this year.

The membership of the committee comprises the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, the Minister for the environment, the Minister for Transport, the Minister for Health, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the Minister for Education, the Minister for public expenditure and reform, the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Social Protection, the Minister for housing and the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. The Minister of State with special responsibility for special education and inclusion and the Minister of State with special responsibility for disability also attend those Cabinet committee meetings. Other Ministers or Ministers of State are invited to participate as required. Three meetings of the Cabinet committee have taken place since I became Taoiseach. The most recent meeting was held last Thursday, 4 July, and the next meeting will be scheduled shortly.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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We are a long way from where we need to be when it comes to supporting children with special needs and disabilities, to put it very mildly.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I agree.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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As we are in the last week of this Dáil session, just let me give the Taoiseach an instance of that. In April, Greg and his wife, Celine, and Greg is an SNA by the way, were in the Public Gallery here when we debated the issue of special needs. We raised the case of his son, Lewis, who is 13, who has autism and an intellectual disability, because he has no school place.

Subsequent to that debate, he met with officials from the Department of Education, the NCSE, as did Nicola who was with him and who is also an SNA. As well as having children with special needs, Greg is also an SNA. There are still no school places. If these parents do not get school places, not only will we be short-changing these vulnerable children with special needs, but Greg and Nicola will have to stop being SNAs and that will roll on to affecting other children with special needs.

Let us take the example as well of Theo, who is 14 and in residential care. He has autism on the severe end of the spectrum and an intellectual disability. He stays with his parents for a couple of days a week, who are in the Dún Laoghaire area. They had to go to court to get a placement in County Louth for their son, when they live in Dún Laoghaire. Theo is in a residential placement in County Meath but stays with his parents two days a week.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Go raibh maith agat.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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It is completely untenable and does not provide for the needs of this family. The parents are supposed to drive up and back to County Louth for a place that is not even suitable.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I thank the Deputy.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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These parents have had to go to court to try to vindicate the rights of their children and still there are no placements for their children. We have to do better than this.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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The way that children with additional needs are failed by this State is nothing short of scandalous. I have no end of parents contacting me who have been on waiting lists for long times and with no end in sight. What it comes down to is the understaffing and underfunding of our health service and an absence of therapists. I will give one particular example, namely, the massive shortage of speech and language therapists in the Tallaght and Dublin south west area. Multiple parents have shared their stories with me. I will give some of them. One quote comes from a parent who said:

The waiting lists for our area are much longer than the children she's in class with and live in areas where they aren't having to wait. Unfortunately the children of Tallaght are disadvantaged due to long waiting lists.

Another parent said:

At the time of assessment she was the only paediatric speech therapist in the Ballyboden primary care centre. There should be 4. It took several months to fill one position and that is all that they could fill due to an embargo on staffing which seems insane to me as I thought the government were full of promises to address services for children's disabilities.

The HSE has told me that there is currently a level of 50% in staff vacancies in the speech and language therapy department for the Dublin south city area. It is not only a problem in speech and language therapy but also in other areas. I get answers back from the HSE. I have one here which says that the HSE is actively recruiting for vacancies in the CDNT. The parent in this case was told by a woman who is on the front line that there is a recruitment embargo and there is no recruitment.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Go raibh maith agat.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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It does not seem to me to that the HSE is recruiting because the vacancies still exist.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I call Deputy Ó Murchú eile.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh maith agat. I ask the Taoiseach to support the idea behind my education amendment Bill. This is the proposal that parents of kids with special needs would be able to apply to schools, primary and secondary, two years beforehand. This would allow the school, the parents and everybody to do everything that needs to be done and the Department and whoever else to play their parts.

The joint committee on autism met the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, earlier. We must look at the best means we can to provide everything across the board from assessment to therapies. The school inclusion model can play a major part in this. Regarding assistive technologies, the Minister of State spoke herself about a number of ideas but the fact is that the system is not always great at getting them into play. That needs to be looked at.

I am going to request some flexibility. This is an issue that is a tangent, but it is very important. Dave Teather is a full-time sub officer stationed in Dundalk. He has worked for Louth County Council fire and rescue for 33 years. His contract is expiring on Monday. Louth County Council sent him for a medical check to Meridian. He passed it and basically was told that he had been declared fit for work. The doctor who usually deals with Mr. Teather was not there, however, so he was told to come back in three months.

As a result, Louth County Council does not accept that he has been checked. Currently, it intends to process his retirement on Monday, 15 July. We really need this to be addressed as soon as possible. If the Taoiseach could use his offices to do so, Mr. Teather would be forever grateful, as would the people of Dundalk, and an absolutely necessary firefighter would be put in place.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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In a few decades' time, a successor of the Taoiseach's will be standing where he is today, issuing an apology to all the victims who are suffering from the current child protection situation in this State. This morning, I received a letter from Tusla confirming that in the past decade, 201 children have died while known to child protection services. Nine of these children were murdered, 32 children died of suicide, six overdosed on drugs, 16 were killed in road accidents and a further 16 were killed in other accidents. If you read these reports, you will find these children are often referred by Tusla to CAMHS, but CAMHS refuses to take these children, saying that it does not take children who are using drugs or alcohol. This is a very bizarre and alarming situation.

Tusla has also confirmed to Aontú that 40 children under the care of Tusla are currently missing. Half of these are unaccompanied minors who have vanished while under the care of the State. Judges and people in the legal profession are deeply concerned at the likelihood that many of these children will be sexually exploited or trafficked. The Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, shredded correspondence he received from Judge Simms, and yet he has now been promoted to become leader of the Green Party. Will the Taoiseach make sure that the voluntary care system, the system that is used to care for children who are in serious need in this State, will receive additional funding in this year's budget? Will he make sure that only the highest standards are used when looking after children who are in State care?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies for raising a range of issues. I appreciate Deputy Boyd Barrett's point that we need to do more and do better when it comes to children’s disability services. The Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, wrote to me specifically about a number of cases in Dún Laoghaire. There seem to be particular concerns with the scale of the teams, and the Deputy has referenced a number of individuals, such as Sam Lewis, Theo and others. There are two issues here. Indeed, this brings me to Deputy Paul Murphy's point as well.

There is a change of approach being taken in respect of school places. We will look seriously Deputy Ó Murchú’s Bill, which instinctively sounds to me to be logical, but let us look at it in more detail. A forward planning unit has now been set up in the Department of Education in relation to special schools, children with disabilities, and planning. This cannot be rocket science. People know that when a child is X age they will require a secondary school place. It seems to me that this has not been happening at an early enough point. I can stand here today and tell the Deputy with a degree of confidence that every child will have a school place in September. I get that and that is good, but it can sometimes miss the point, though, regarding the level of stress, anxiety and worry that the child and their family go through. The point is taken, and I am happy to follow up on the additional specific cases if the Deputy so wishes.

On the issue of therapy places, I can assure the Deputy, because I have looked into it, that this is not an issue of an embargo. I accept that the HSE has to live within its budget, and we can debate what is an appropriate level of workforce, etc. I can send the figures to the Deputy - I do not have them to hand - but the number of fully funded vacant posts we have in children's disability network teams-----

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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It is a cause for concern.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----is a significant cause for concern. There is some encouragement. We ran a recruitment campaign that concluded a little while ago. At the end of May, 160 offers were made to successful candidates. I am going from memory here, rather than my note, but I think approximately 53 job offers from the figure of 160 have now been made and processed. There is another recruitment campaign about to be run as well. They are also looking at new, innovative ideas around therapy assistants and new grades in that space. This worked in other areas, such as psychology, in the past. They are looking at areas such as student sponsorship programmes as well. I met Bernard Gloster, the head of the HSE, on this only approximately a week ago. I am sure there are other issues to which the Deputy can point regarding funding challenges, but on this issue, we actually have more funding allocated than posts we can currently fill. We need to work intensively in that regard, and we are doing so.

Second, we need to increase the number of people we are training in these spaces. I thank my colleagues, the Minister, Deputy O’Donovan, the Minister for Health and the Minister for Education for the work that is being done to very significantly increase the number of training places in Irish universities from September. This does not fix every issue, but it should provide us with a pipeline of graduates coming out of Irish universities in key therapies such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and others. I am pleased that that will kick off from September.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Government should drop the fees for them as well.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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There is an interesting discussion to be had about that, particularly regarding master's level degrees. I am a big fan of reducing fees; I did it twice. At master's level in particular, there is a conversation to be had, especially if the person is willing to work in the Irish health service, about whether that is an intervention that could be made. That is under active consideration.

I take very seriously the point raised by Deputy Ó Murchú about the concern that people in Dundalk have about Dave-----

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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David Teather.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----who is due to retire on Monday but has no wish to retire on Monday and neither do the people of Dundalk wish to see him retire. I will ask my colleague, Deputy Dillon, who is the Minister of State with responsibility in that Department, if anything can be done. There is obviously a role for the local authority there but I do not wish to speak for it. The Deputy’s office might contact the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, after this. Let us see if clarity can be brought to the issue.

On the issue raised by Deputy Tóibín, I have a detailed note but not for this question, unfortunately. I am happy to write to the Deputy on the issue of children in care who have gone missing in our State. It is a serious issue and it is taken seriously as well. We need to do more in terms of beefing up our child protection services. I would argue that we have made a number of steps in recent years, whether it is constitutional change, legislative change or the establishment of Tusla. The Deputy’s ask, that we do more in relation to the budget in this area, is one that I will take it very seriously.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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The roll-out of assistive technologies is an important point that needs to be looked at. It obviously can facilitate-----

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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It is an important point. What we have to look at as well as the funding of our children’s disability services is how we can use technologies and reform the delivery of services. I hear that from parents and that is one issue that is being supported.