Cara's meeting this morning outside the Dáil was a powerful one. We heard about the horrendous failure by this State of so many children across this country. She made the point that she should not have to be here. She should be in school. She should not have to fight for the rights of her brothers and for the tens of thousands of other children who have been failed. What we get from the Government are empty promises and empty words. It cynically allows motions to pass, with no attempt to actually implement them. There has been a continuation of that failure. I will give the Tánaiste an example. Oisín is an eight-year-old who lives in Templeogue. He has significant additional needs. He requires speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, psychology and feeding therapy. He has been on the list for those supports since 2018 but he has not had a single support - no therapy, no nothing. His mother got an e-mail from the CDNT in Chamber House last week which stated that "we are currently only starting to make children active with the team that we referred in the year 2016". Given that he has been on the list since 2018, that means that at the very best, it is going to be 2026 or 2027 before he gets any supports from the State.

I thank the Deputy. He is way over time.

I could go on.

Please do not go on; you are over time.

I could speak about Cyra Cahill whose mother is in the Gallery. I intend to speak about her case next week.

Deputy, please.

Every single day, we could speak non-stop-----

Deputy, please, you are over time.

-----about the failures of this State. We need action, not just words.

Hear, hear.

I agree that we need action with respect to the provision of therapy services and assessment of need.

A child does not require a diagnosis to access therapy services. The delays in accessing assessments of need are extremely frustrating. In my view, legislation will be required following the court decision some time back, which upended, if one likes, the HSE's approach to assessments of need. Significant funding has been provided for the children's disability network teams. My view is that we need to go back to a schools-based delivery model, starting with special schools. We have initiated a pilot, but there is a lot of resistance to it within the HSE in particular and among those who advocated for the progressing disability services model. My view is that we need to have a multidisciplinary team-based approach in our schools-----

I thank the Tánaiste.

-----beginning with our special schools, so that the occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists and psychologists are in the schools with the teachers. That would be a much more consistent and sustainable model than the one which has not worked to date.