Today, as the Taoiseach knows and as we all know, marks the beginning of the 50-hour protest by young Cara Darmody. Like others, I welcome Cara and her father Mark to the Gallery. Cara is an incredible campaigner for the rights of children with additional needs, and she is only 14 years old. She is staging this protest, as the Taoiseach knows, to raise awareness of what is an emergency, the Government's failure to comply with the Disability Act. The Taoiseach has just said in response that the status quo is "not tenable". Of course the status quo is not tenable. It is not tenable for children like Cara's brothers or for the many thousands of children, 15,000 children nationally, who are now languishing on waiting lists awaiting an assessment of need, in breach of the Government's own law. When the HSE receives an application, it is set out in law that the assessment of need must be carried out within six months. My colleague Deputy Alan Kelly has received responses to parliamentary questions which reveal that in the first quarter of this year, that legally binding six-month deadline was missed in a shocking 93% of cases, which is an extraordinarily high rate of failure. It is a desperate embarrassment, and it is an ongoing problem that the Taoiseach has inherited from his own outgoing Government, the previous Government. There can be no passing of the buck. The Taoiseach said there would be a step change; he used that language again just now.
Sentiment score: -0.15
That is not what we have seen. It is two years to the week this week since we in Labour brought a Dáil motion, with the great support and encouragement of Cara Darmody, setting out a constructive plan to take on and address these waiting lists and to treat the chronic delay in diagnoses like the national emergency it is. Many of us will recall that on that day in this House, the then Minister of State, Anne Rabbitte, made a powerful speech acknowledging responsibility for failure and the profound impact on children and families. Anne Rabbitte made a commitment that if capacity did not improve, she would adopt our Labour Party proposal to reimburse parents for private assessments as an emergency and as a constructive way of addressing this appalling shortfall. We all took that significant announcement as a sign that the Taoiseach and his Government would place a greater focus on resolving this. However, the stories and accounts we are hearing from parents and families throughout the country and the waiting list figures really say otherwise. We understand the Government will not oppose tonight's cross-party motion. That is welcome, but non-opposition is not enough. The Government did not oppose our Labour Party motion two years ago on this very topic. It made all the right noises then, but the problem has grown worse since then. The responses to Deputy Kelly's parliamentary questions show that in the first quarter of this year, just 1,412 assessments were carried out. That is a tiny number, a fraction of the need, when we see that more than 15,000 children are overdue an assessment. This number is expected to grow to 25,000 by the end of this year. I am asking the Taoiseach, as Cara Darmody asks, when this will be treated as the national emergency it is. When will we see those waiting lists properly and effectively addressed?
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I listened carefully when the Taoiseach said the issue is not one of resources but one of capacity. Then he threw out a number of hypothetical ways in which capacity could be addressed. However, the Government has not done anything to address capacity. I sat yesterday in my own constituency with two desperate mothers who are desperate to get school places for their children. The Taoiseach spoke about school places. The failure of the Government on school places for children with additional needs is shameful. The two mothers asked me, "Why does the Government not upskill us?" Why do we not use the resource of all those parents who have fought so hard for so long and had to struggle so hard to get places, therapies and assessment of needs in the first place for their children. Let us look at a programme of upskilling. That is what they are telling me. Otherwise, the Government will continue to fail. I am looking at the letter Deputy Kelly got. It said 7% of assessment of needs were carried out within the timeframe. That is a 93% failure rate. That is shocking. Will the Taoiseach meet Cara Darmody today? Will he hear from her the constructive proposals she has based on her own lived experience in her own family on what his Government can constructively do to address that capacity shortfall?
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Will you meet Cara?
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Good.
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