Last week I hosted a meeting in Tallaght for parents of children with disabilities and additional needs. We had campaigners, activists and lawyers present. The room was packed with parents telling heartbreaking stories: stories of being on long waiting lists for assessments of need, stories of waiting more than a year for therapies, stories of waiting for mental health supports, stories of waiting for respite and stories of waiting for appropriate school places. It is not only heartbreaking but also maddening and infuriating that this State continues to fail children with additional needs and their families to such a degree as is currently the case. It is ultimately a political choice. Not only was it reflected in the budget but it is also reflected in the failure to ratify the optional protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities because it would give these families the right to take action against this State.

I do not accept it is a political choice. To the extent that it is, we now have a record budget for special education, a dedicated Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, and a record budget for disability services. The real struggle, we tend to find, is in hiring the appropriately qualified staff as well as a court decision that requires a huge amount of resources to be used on very complicated assessments of need that may not be needed. We are working on that and trying to resolve it.