When we were kicked out in 1997, more than 9% of people were unemployed. That was better, however, than the 14.2% who were unemployed in 1992 when the Progressive Democrats Party was kicked out. Deputy Kenny and I may have chalked up 50 years between us but the Tánaiste would be well on the way to that number if his constituents had not given him a long holiday every time they saw his performance in this House. I might have been on the high chair at the Cabinet but there is a good chance the Tánaiste will get the high jump from the people once more, as has been his habitual record.

I wish to ask the Tánaiste about a file he received last year from the parents of children with special needs in Drogheda. The organisation in question, Special Needs Active Parents, represents 64 families in Louth and a smaller number in Meath. In this file, these parents set out that there are 139 children under six years of age and 350 between six and 18 years with spina bifida, cerebral palsy, autism and several other disabilities in their area.

This file, which was sent to the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, explains that these children cannot access occupational therapy and speech therapy service. There is one occupational therapist, who was appointed only a year ago, to serve these children. The need for these services is recognised by the HSE, which says there should be one occupational therapist per 15 children. The reality, however, is that there is only one full-time occupational therapist for these 490 children and provision for a half day a week for another occupational therapist who sets up the special equipment.

The file includes parents' harrowing letters detailing how their children are affected. One child, for example, who is named and whose parents are willing to be named, was born on 18 February 2003 and diagnosed with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Since birth, he has received only four sessions of occupational therapy. His parents state:

Our children do not have time on their side and we, as totally worn out and frustrated parents, can only do so much.... A lot of us, myself included, have given up paid employment to be at home full time with our children.

Did the Tánaiste read the letters or any one of them and did he reply to them? Has he taken any action in response to that file? Can he explain why, given his view of us having more resources than we need, those parents are left in that limbo land without the services acknowledged by the HSE for their children with those particular disabilities?

As the Deputy knows, one of the functions of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform is to take charge of the promotion in these Houses of the legislation which was necessary to deal with the disability area. The Deputy will be aware that last year the Minister of State with particular responsibility for disabilities, Deputy Fahey, and I put in place the sectoral plans to deal with all aspects of disability and the statutory basis for all of those plans to be implemented. Ireland has one of the most advanced laws on disability. The entire disability sector was brought into a very lengthy process of consultation on how we would tackle the various facets of disability in our society. We put through the disability legislation and the sectoral plans. These were published and became the responsibility of individual Ministers with their own sectoral plans in each area.

The correspondence to which the Deputy refers would, of course, have gone to the equality section of my Department and would have been considered there by the Minister of State, Deputy Fahey, and fed into the process which led to the disability legislation being enacted and the disability sectoral plans. This year a sum of €800 million, up 30% on previous funding, is being spent on special needs education. This year we are increasing very substantially the number of occupational therapists in training. As part of the overall expenditure in the health area, the Health Service Executive is getting major increased resources to deal with specific cases of the kind the Deputy mentioned, such as parents whose children are afflicted with the tragic condition of spina bifida. We were speaking earlier about Deputy Kenny's comparison with ten years ago and Deputy Rabbitte's comparison with the unemployment rate of ten years ago. If one considers what has been done in the lifetime of the two Governments, in which the current parties are partners, it is clear there has been a dramatic transformation.

Did the Tánaiste ask them?

If one looks to the amounts of money spent, €1 million extra was provided for disability in 1996 when the Opposition was sitting in that high chair. That was the extent of the munificence of that highly successful Government.

I know about the Minister.

The Opposition left the disabled children of Ireland high and dry.

Is it down to money?

Please allow the Tánaiste to reply without interruption.

One would be ashamed——

What about the kids?

The Tánaiste was forced by the courts——

A Cheann Comhairle, has your clock stopped?

Please allow the Tánaiste to respond without interruption. Deputy Allen is not the leader of the Labour Party and I ask him to allow the leader of the party to hear the answer to his question.

The Opposition would be ashamed collectively if it was reminded of how many special needs teachers there were when its party members sat at the Cabinet table.

What about the kids?

This year we have announced a five-year disability plan with an extra €900 million going into that area. Under the disability legislation, each child is entitled to have an individual education plan put in place.

The Tánaiste should tell them that.

They are not getting it

Each child is entitled to an independent appeal if that child's parents regard the plans put in place as inadequate.

That is an insult.

On a point of order——-

The Deputy is not the leader of her party.

The simple fact is that when Deputy Burton held office in my Department nothing was done by the Labour Party or Fine Gael for people with disabilities in this country.

The Tánaiste is a disgrace.

Has the Tánaiste read the files?

He never read them.

I thought the other man who is usually in that chair would say anything but, by God, he is only in the ha'penny place with this guy. The Tánaiste fed the file into the system. Did he read any of the letters?

Not at all.

Did he reply to any of the letters?

He is too important for that.

The Tánaiste said that ten years ago we did nothing. Those children are aged three and a half and four and a half years. They were not born when we were in government. If the basis of our exchanges are to be what happened ten years ago, from the man who said he would abolish stamp duty because we did not need the resources, what is the point in telling these parents we have the most advanced laws? Where are the services? It is not about law. There is one occupational therapist for 409 children. The parents in acute distress take the trouble to prepare and send a file to the Tánaiste in the belief that he took the equality part of his portfolio seriously and he does not even bother to acknowledge it——

The Deputy's time has concluded.

——let alone take any action on it. He has the sheer brass neck to get up here and point the finger at the party that caused the Department of Equality and Law Reform at Cabinet rank to come into existence.

Hear, hear.

The first thing the Tánaiste did when he came into office was to abolish it, take it under his own wing, and from that day to this he has not paid the slightest regard to it. What does he have to say to these parents who in desperation gave up their jobs to care for their children with disabilities and who are desperately seeking services which the HSE says are an acknowledged unmet need?

The Deputy's time has concluded.

He comes in here trading political insults as if we were back in the literary and historical society. When will the Tánaiste take his responsibilities as Minister seriously and give us less of the rhetoric and bombast and tell the mothers of these children when they can expect to get physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists? That is the issue.

For stunts the Deputy has no equal. He comes in here——

That is shameful.

The Tánaiste to reply without interruption.

The Deputy should turn off the moral outrage, it does not suit him. He comes in here and asks me from memory whether I read individual letters a number of years after the event. I cannot give him a truthful answer on that because the volume of correspondence in my Department is such that if I did answer that question one way or the other, the file could show that I did see it or that I did not see it.

The Tánaiste said he did not.

I did not say that.

How did the Tánaiste know he had the file?

I did not say that. I am careful with what I say unlike Deputy Stagg.

There were services for ten years.

It is not rhetoric and bombast to point out that when the Deputies opposite were in office they did have a Department called the Department of Equality and Law Reform.

And a Minister who believed in equality unlike the Tánaiste.

As Deputy Michael D. Higgins is not the leader of his party I ask him to allow the leader to hear the answer to his question.

Unfortunately it is true that its record regarding the disabled children of Ireland was pitiful and shameful and no significant resources were put into that area at all.

The Tánaiste was there before that.

The Tánaiste signed the letter about the children. He then forgot about them. They mean nothing to him.

Please allow the Tánaiste to continue without interruption.

Between 1999 and 2002, I had the privilege of seeing the Minister, Deputy Cowen, and others at the Cabinet table saying the time had come to remedy the disgraceful legacy the Opposition had left in place——

Did he not say "If in doubt leave them out"?

——and that money must and would be found for children with disabilities.

The Tánaiste must be joking. He never stopped to tackle them.

This Government has ploughed record resources into dealing with disability.

He is the Minister for inequality.

If they are going to shout me down, that is fine, a Cheann Comhairle.

Allow the Tánaiste to continue without interruption, please.

No Government has engaged in a more dramatic transformation of the resources available for people with disabilities than this Government.

It did not come down to where it counts, on the ground.

When we came into office——

The Minister still will not answer the question.

If Deputies are going to shout at me, that is too bad.

Give up.

He is sulking.

I am not sulking.