I have spoken before about the broken system of needs assessment and delivery of services. Today, alongside this welcome motion, we see the Government making ambitious promises of faster assessments of need backed by new expert teams to streamline processes. It sounds like an early Christmas gift but time will tell whether it is just an empty promise or if it can actually be delivered. The Government tells us that 11 new teams with 44 expert staff have transformed the system, yet we know that across the health service, the vacancy rates remain stubbornly high. Speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists are all in short supply. We hear recruitment and retention are ongoing, but the challenges of meeting that are equally stark. With so many posts lying vacant for months and sometimes years, where will the staff in this plan come from? Where is the plan to fix the staff recruitment so the plan can actually work? We are told that 6,000 assessments will be completed this year, which is a 44% increase on last year. It is impressive but it is against a backdrop, as others have said, that will reach 22,000 by the end of the year. Families are still waiting. People are outside the Dáil, protesting, and the scale of the challenge is dwarfing the headline numbers. Without a credible recruitment plan, the targets risk being little more than further political spin. The reforms promise to free therapists from paperwork, which would of course be welcome, but if the HSE cannot fill the existing vacancies and retain staff in front-line roles, the bottlenecks will remain. I welcome, in theory, the single point of access and the autism assessment protocol that might help in the long term, but families need assurance that qualified professionals will be available to deliver the service. Announcing reforms is easy when the Government is being held to account, but the issue is whether they can be delivered. That requires tackling recruitment and retention of staff issues and of course the short, medium and long-term resources. Until we see a clear plan to address the vacancy rates, we still have credibility issues with these targets. I welcome that the HSE will introduce a single point of access system. My time is up but challenges remain for the Government to meet its own targets.

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