The Minister of State will be aware, as all Government TDs are, that one of the most significant promises we made at the outset of the formation of the Government was to enhance services for children with disabilities. I recall the Taoiseach defining what we needed as a step change in how we provide these services. The programme for Government is explicit in its objective to: Ensure children and their families who need early intervention and therapy input can access that support in a timely way by increasing staffing, training more therapists, and prioritising children’s disability teams to deliver supports and services. Interestingly, that objective did not include legislative change, but it is welcome that we had the flexibility to recognise where a system was not working and change legislation to make sure we could enhance it to try to bring about that change. Today marks a step in meeting the objective of the programme for Government. I share the sentiment of some of our colleagues, in that it is a cautious welcome I give this. In doing that, I fully recognise the Minister of State's commitment and the commitment of the Minister, Deputy Foley, who has discussed this with us in depth at our parliamentary party meeting. She has given this a lot of time and a lot of thought. I compliment both the Minister and the Minister of State on that. I hope the changes they are making will bring about the measures we need and that they will have success. As other Members have said, I am anxious about the time it may take to see the impact, and I am anxious about the measures having the effect we desire to see as a Government because, like many, I note the large numbers of children currently waiting. There are 217 children waiting beyond the timeline in County Galway alone. I welcome the first steps in developing a system where there are no wrong doors for parents. That is crucial. Parents who have concerns about their children or professionals who refer children to therapists for assessment or therapy need to know they are going to receive a welcome. Too often, we hear of parents being advised by a service provider that the needs of their child are not appropriate to the intervention to which they have been referred. We know about children being referred to CDNT, which then says that CAMHS is the appropriate service only for CAMHS to say it thinks community psychology is the appropriate service. We need to streamline that. We need to make sure that when a child is referred, the referral is made to someone who can and will help, not somebody who might pass that child to a different service provider. We are moving towards that direction. We need to stop that frustrating merry-go-round. In welcoming the legislative change, I am confident that we have matched this change with appropriate funding in budget 2026 to resource these new teams. Part of budget 2026 was about making sure our public services could withstand what might be constraining economic circumstances. I hope we have included this measure in that. I am confident that we have. I am concerned, though, that we may meet challenges in recruiting appropriate therapists to the roles. If we do meet that challenge, we have an obligation to overcome it. That is through working conditions, job security, permanency and appropriate contracts.

Sentiment score: 0.27