Children with disabilities in south Tipperary and across the country are suffering greatly, especially children with special and complex needs. I have a lot of examples of children who were receiving therapies from primary care teams and have been discharged from that primary care team because they are deemed to have more complex needs that are more appropriate to the children's disability network teams, CDNTs, but the CDNTs do not have the appropriate therapists and the child is left with no place to go. Where a child in this situation has been waiting for longer than three months, the State, whether through the National Treatment Purchase Fund or whatever, should fund that child with those complex needs to get private treatment. If their needs are deemed too complex to be dealt with by primary care, they are sent on to the CDNT but, because of a lack of staff including therapists, they are languishing on waiting lists. These are the most vulnerable and precious children with complex needs. It needs to be dealt with.

As the Deputy said, a lot of progress has been made on primary care teams and typically children who have needs, be they mild, moderate or complex, are getting access to the primary care teams earlier. We have allocated funding this year through the waiting list action plan to bring in private providers. My view is that we should use every scintilla of healthcare provision available, whether publicly or privately, to tackle the waiting lists and get children the care they need as quickly as possible. In many of the specialties required in disability services where, as the Deputy said, the services are more complex, very little private provision is available. In some cases, however, it is available and the HSE is clear, both for primary care through me and for the disability services through the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, that funding is available to access private care when it is available.