Ar fud an Stáit, tá an Rialtas ag ligean síos agus ag teip ar leanaí agus ar dhaoine óga le míchumas agus riachtanais speisialta. Níl idirghabháil a d’athródh saolta na bpáistí seo á cur ar fáil dóibh. Tá na mílte daoine óga le míchumas agus riachtanais speisialta fágtha ar an imeall agus an Rialtas seo ag diúltú seirbhísí dóibh. Inniu, ba mhaith liom cás Harry, gasúr beag naoi mbliana d’aois as Baile Átha Cliath, a ardú leis an Aire.

Across the State, children and young people with disabilities and special needs are being failed. Vital services, such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, are not bring provided to these children. These are life-changing interventions. They are essential if our children are to reach their full potential, to thrive and to participate in their communities. If they are not provided, the quality of life for thousands of children and young people is profoundly affected and can have long-lasting consequences for them.

The HSE is currently reorganising the provision of these therapies. The progressing disability services, PDS, programme is meant to be making things better, but families and teachers on the front line are telling us a very different story, namely, that things are getting worse.

Harry Kirwan, from Dublin, is nine years old. He attends Scoil Mochua, Clondalkin. His teachers describe him as fun loving, always smiling, and a boy who loves being involved in everything that is happening around him. Although Harry is non-verbal, with the aid of his iPad he is very much a real talker. He also has a talent for numbers - a boy with so much potential and so much energy.

Harry has cerebral palsy and a mild-to-moderate intellectual disability and last year, he underwent serious hip surgery. In order to be able to stand and walk again, he needs physiotherapy. Although physiotherapy is available in Scoil Mochua, Harry cannot access this service. His family and teachers have told us that, because of the delay in accessing physiotherapy, Harry may never be able to walk or stand again. Why is this being allowed to happen?

PDS allocates interventions based on a child's home address, not his or her school address. Harry and his family live in the geographic area of community healthcare organisation, CHO, 6 where there are no physiotherapy services available to him but his school is in the area of HSE CHO 7. Despite the fact that there are physiotherapists available in Scoil Mochua, his school, the rules prevent these clinicians from supporting him and as a result, Harry has received no State-supported physiotherapy since his surgery last year. Harry is not alone, not even in his school. There are six children currently being denied services in this school because of this bureaucratic madness. Across the State, there are thousands more. This is nothing short of a scandal.

My question is, how can the Government continue to neglect young children of this nature and how can it be justified? Why is the Government not guaranteeing that all children and young people with disabilities and special needs get the support they need? Why is the HSE denying Harry access to life-altering physiotherapy? The HSE needs to stop the meetings and start treating these children. Parents are telling us that the situation on the ground is worse now than ever before and action is needed. I ask the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, today what will he do to ensure that we have therapists on the ground in each of the CHO areas to provide the vital services that so many children, such as Harry, deserve and so desperately need.

I thank Deputy Doherty for raising this important matter. Where I agree with the Deputy is on the commitment that the State must have, and certainly this Government has, to give Harry the best possible start in life, recognising the needs he has and the support he deserves for the journey in life ahead of him.

The Government is committed to putting in places the therapists that are needed to make a difference. We recognise, of course, that in the provision of any therapy services and any social and health supports, particularly for those who have complex needs, there will always be issues. There will always be difficulties but we are committed with the funds that are available to us due to a growing economy to putting in place the supports to help Harry and to help many others.

What Deputy Doherty put to me is, what are we doing in relation to it? What we are doing, through the Health Service Executive, is putting in place a programme that will lead to the reinstatement of 136 whole-time equivalent posts for therapists that has the aim of supporting Harry and all other girls and boys across our country who deserve and need this additional support.

It is the case, as Members may be aware, that, following some engagement with staff representative bodies, the reinstatement process had been temporarily paused but over the weekend, we made further progress in relation to this issue. The HSE will continue with its efforts with a particular focus on special schools and how the right numbers of therapists can be put in place. We recognise that we have a duty to engage with Harry, to engage with his parents and to engage with all other children and parents across the country, while listening to the needs of staff and experts in this area.

The work is now under way to deliver against the 136 additional posts. This is in addition to the 85 posts that were reinstated that were announced in 2021. This work is now under way in three different phases.

For the first phase of it, a degree of reassignment happened with regard to existing HSE staff to prioritise these particular roles being filled. We are now engaging in another process that will take us up to the autumn regarding how another third of these posts, which will be 44 roles, can be filled. What we will do, in parallel to all of this, is put in place the recruitment efforts that are needed to look at how we can provide, in particular, the right physiotherapy posts that can make a difference and the right occupational therapy posts that can make a difference to those who need and who deserve additional support and help. The Government is absolutely committed to doing this.

The latest update that the Government has received from the HSE indicates that out of the 85 posts that were allocated to special schools in 2021, 55 of them have been filled. Progress has been made in filling those 55 roles. More needs to be done to get the additional 30 roles filled, and we will.

Even with the commitment that the Government has and the resources that have been made available to do this work, it is a challenge recruiting the people to do this work and getting the right people in to provide the right level of support. The case that Deputy Doherty has raised is what will remind the Government and give us the commitment that we need to continue with this work in the months ahead.

I listened to what the Minister said and I am sure Harry's parents will be listening closely to what he said. Let me say that Harry cannot wait until next autumn. Harry had serious hip surgery last year. Harry's family and the school have been engaging with the HSE for a year, to no avail. This is an issue of whether Harry will be able stand and walk again in the future and there is no reason that should not happen with the proper services that have been denied to him for over a year since his surgery.

Harry is a child who loves his school. It is the centre of his universe. The worst thing is that he goes to Scoil Mochua where there is a physiotherapist who can provide the service to him but Harry is being denied it because he lives in a different area from where the school is.

Therefore, he cannot avail of the services that are in the school he attends every day. This is red tape. It is about the future of this child, and not just this child as there are six other children in the school. The parents of 85% of the children referred to Inclusion Ireland's report say they have been waiting more than a year for services. Will the Minister intervene on behalf of Harry and the other children at his school? This can be done quickly. Will he give us a commitment for all of the thousands of other children throughout the State who are being failed?

I thank Deputy Doherty for again raising this matter. His reminder that Harry, at such a young age, has already undergone a hip operation, which is such a large and significant operation for a child to go through, and the other six children in the school of course reminds me why it is so important to make the funding available to the HSE, through the work of the Minister for Health, to put in place the right roles and posts to assist these girls and boys in their journey of life. It is because of the duty we have to them. I am very concerned to hear that despite funding being made available to have a physiotherapist in place in the school, young Harry is not in a position to access this or is not allowed to in the way Deputy Doherty has said. The Minister for Health indicated to me in the course of Deputy Doherty raising the matter that he will certainly make contact on this issue to understand why this is happening and to see what can be done to give Harry and his fellow students the start that Deputy Doherty, I and the Government want to make sure they can have.