As I am sure the Tánaiste is aware, the Government is running an advertising campaign at the moment on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, UNCRPD. It is as if the Government suddenly wanted to make people aware that disability rights are human rights. Does the Tánaiste understand how disabled people, or parents of children with additional needs who are currently waiting years for basic, bare-minimum services, would think that that the advertising campaign is some kind of a sick joke? Surely the Tánaiste can see the hypocrisy when the State is the reason why people cannot exercise these human rights.

I should not have to remind the Tánaiste that disability services in this country are shameful. Rights are entirely notional. They are on paper, and they are in the UNCRPD but not an option in practice in our communities. Nobody gets anything they are entitled to without a fight. Parents of children with additional needs spend their whole lives fighting. They are in a constant battle with a system that is supposed to support them. The only thing their children are guaranteed is waiting lists. Sometimes those waiting lists last for years.

Some 16,522 children are currently waiting for their first appointment with a children's disability network team, CDNT. More than 10,000 of them have been waiting for over a year with no intervention and no therapy. These delays are so bad because of chronic staff shortages. More than one third of posts in CDNTs are vacant. In some teams, vacancy rates are more than 60%. This wholesale and pervasive State neglect has disastrous and lifelong consequences. Children have a very small and critical window to get essential early intervention therapies. If they do not, their development can be limited and they could be prevented from reaching their full potential and living a full independent life. These children are not just being failed by the State. They are being actively harmed by persistent neglect.

If people had a right, as the Government is now advertising, they would be able to take a case when they cannot exercise their right, but they cannot. Why? It is because the Government and previous Governments have not ratified the optional protocol of the UNCRPD. Then, the Government runs an advertising campaign to tell people that they have rights that they cannot exercise.

This week, three years into this Government, the Minister and Minister of State for Children, Disability, Equality, Integration and Youth, Deputies Roderic O'Gorman and Anne Rabbitte, respectively, have just published a new roadmap for disability services. Among other things, the plan says it will fill 460 vacancies by the end of 2024 and 240 by the end of 2025. Doing that would be an improvement but how is the Government going to do that? The plan says it will fill vacancies with a robust recruitment and retention plan but what specifically will the Government be doing differently to hire staff? I searched the roadmap as well for a budget but could not see it. How much additional or new funding has been assigned to rolling it out? Finally, given that the Government is advertising people's right under the UNCRPD, will the Government ratify the optional protocol?

First, I acknowledge that there are very significant challenges facing families with children who have disabilities, particularly with regard to access to therapies. There has to be a balanced perspective regarding overall disability provision. I would argue that over the last three years, there has been very significant progress, and in the years before that, on special education, which the Deputy did not refer to her in her commentary. While that is always challenging, I think it has been a key priority and delivery there has been more effective in the health service in terms of therapies and in the CDNTs.

In budget 2024, we are now looking at about €2.7 billion, which has been allocated to provide additional teaching and care supports for children with special education needs. That is a 5% increase on last year's funding. There will be an additional 744 special education teachers and over 1,200 additional special needs assistant, SNA posts. We now have over 20,000 special education teachers supporting students across the school system, and 21,584 in total. I recall that when I was Minister for Education and Science and I initiated the SNA scheme, we had none. We have to look at things and say that we have a lot more to do but over the decades, a lot happened in education and in the integration of disabilities into education.

In the recent budget, we increased the domiciliary care allowance in terms of once-off funding, and we did the same last year, so we have increased funding for various disability payments on the social protection side. On the health side, and disability has now moved over to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, there is significant funding to assist the expansion of services.

The one area that has proved very challenging and difficult is access to therapies. A model was adopted by the HSE over a decade ago entitled the Progressing Disability Services for Children & Young People, which has not yielded the results that we require. In some areas it has but not in respect of recruitment and retention of physiotherapists, occupational therapists, OTs, and speech and language therapists to that service. We have had many engagements with the HSE and we are continuing. I know that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is continuing that engagement with the HSE with regard to recruitment and retention of therapists. Other parts of the health service have been far more effective in recruiting therapists than the paediatric side of the system or that which concerns children with special needs.

That is an issue. There is renewed focus on how we recruit and retain therapists in order that children can have ready access to them.

The Tánaiste said we need to have balance with respect to the overall approach to disability services and flagged education. It is important to note that we are still in the situation whereby there is no assessment done of how many children at primary level will need a particular type of class or school when they go to second level. Then people cannot get access to education. Some people travel for two hours to get to special schools. Flagging education as an area where there has been overall improvement goes to show how pitiful the overall picture is.

Just to highlight the overall picture, in the budget, the Government allocated €64 million to disability services. I thought that was a typo, particularly as the Department’s capacity review stated that we need another €350 million to meet the unmet needs of disabled people. Only a one-off disability payment was introduced, which does not acknowledge the fact that people have disabilities every day of the year, not for one day. Looking at the overall picture again, there are matters such as the motorised transport grant. That was axed ago, and the Government has introduced a new grant. It is almost as if someone is saying "Show me your budget and I will tell you your priorities”. The Government is not prioritising disability services. If there was not an allocation to make real improvement in this budget, with such a huge surplus, it is difficult to believe that the Government will ever do it.

I go back to my questions, which have not been answered. Will the Government ratify the optional protocol? How does he plan to recruit and retain staff in children's disability network teams, CDNTs, now that this new plan has been released? The Joint Committee on Disability Matters has heard time and again that the problem is recruitment and retention, and that millions of euro are being put into trying to recruit and retain staff but this simply is not working. Then we have a situation where, finally, section 39 workers get a pitiful attempt at pay parity, but it is only a 10% increase. We still have a situation where staff in CDNTs do not have pay parity and continue to leave and go to HSE jobs. How is the Government going to staff the CDNTs?

It is not pitiful; it is an 8% increase in pay, agreed through-----

Without pay parity, people will still leave and go to-----

Deputy, through the Chair.

The Deputy had her chance. The investment in education is not pitiful either. It has been significant over the years and major advances have been made, particularly at primary level. Yes, there needs to be progress at second level. We have provided stronger legislative obligations on all second level schools to take in children with special needs. The core rate went up €12. It is not a once-off. The core rate has gone up €29 since the Government came to office in terms of the core rate relating to the disability payment. The core domiciliary rate has increased by even more, which is as it should be. As the Deputy stated, the recruitment of therapists is not a funding issue. It has not been a funding issue for the past few years; it has been a recruitment and retention issue. It is also a work culture issue. When I say that, I mean that the employment space the HSE provides for therapists for children needs to be improved.