You are the tetchy one. It is you, not me. I have already got my nickname, sorry.

Radie Peat of Lankum and Dan Lambert, manager of Kneecap, recently spoke about their experiences as parents of a child with additional needs. Speaking with Oliver Callan on RTÉ radio, they described the challenges that they, and thousands of families like them, face in battling to get supports for their child. Since their child was 17 months old, Radie and Dan realised she was autistic and non-verbal. Despite this, she will not get the supports she urgently needs until she is six and a half years old. The story Radie and Dan have shared mirrors the experience of thousands of other families. After looking for help, their belief that they would get the necessary supports was quickly shattered. From the outset, they were told their child would not get what she needed in a timely manner. They were advised to leave Dublin. They were told their child would get better support in any other European country and that they would be better off leaving Ireland. They were told they would have to battle continuously to get access to basic supports and that nothing would happen at the appropriate time. All this resulted in them feeling completely overwhelmed.

Radie spoke of how she had to cry and beg as she navigated a grossly under-resourced system and how trying to figure out how the systems work is like a full-time job. She spoke about fighting and battling to get to the next step in the process, only to realise when she got there that there is nothing there and about how doing all this while working and supporting a child is completely and utterly exhausting. Radie and Dan were speaking not only about their experience but about the experience of thousands of children and families in similar situations.

Some 14,221 children are overdue for an assessment of needs and a further 12,920 children are on waiting lists for children's disability network teams, CDNTs. The Taoiseach is aware that early intervention is key and that there is no time to lose. Children with additional needs are being left behind while their parents jump through hoops to try to access basic services and supports. Last May, I asked him about the 700 vacancies in CDNTs, with some areas experiencing staff shortages as high as 60% and even 70%. How many of these vacant posts have been filled? When will children with additional needs get the access to basic supports and services they urgently need?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I accept fully that the journey of parents of children with special needs is an extremely challenging, difficult and traumatic one. They simply have to fight too hard and too long for access to services and in some cases, though not all, for education and access to school places. It is my objective as Taoiseach to change this story and it is a key priority of mine, along with housing and child poverty. They are the key priorities of my term as Taoiseach and of the wider Government.

I am establishing a disability unit in the Department of the Taoiseach. We had our first meeting with about eight Ministers earlier this week and a disability Cabinet subcommittee will follow. All Ministers are clear that there must be a whole-of-government response to the issue of disability more generally - it is wide - with a particular focus on children in education and then on assessment of needs and, more critically, access to therapy services. In the first instance, we must deal with the assessment of needs issue. The 2022 High Court judgment of Ms Justice Phelan in the case of C.T.M. (a minor) v HSE has created a situation where there are huge resources and backlog in the area of assessment of needs. The Deputy is correct that the number is 14,000. That is not tenable. Legislation has to be brought in to deal with this. That will happen and there will be engagement with the House on it.

We have to get the right balance of existing resources to the services and the provision of services. You do not have to get an assessment of need to avail of services. You should have an entitlement to services even when awaiting the assessment of need. The Minister for Education is developing proposals for a school-based therapy service beginning in special schools. This was a commitment we made in the programme for Government which we are going to see through. The CDNTs and HSE are continuing to recruit across the 93 CDNTs. The current recruitment campaign has issued about 145 job offers across key therapy roles. Progress is slow. There was a 17% increase in staff from 2023 to 2024 and another 111 are expected to join soon. The vacancy rate has dropped by 7.9% to 21%, but none of that is enough. It is not adequate.

I thank the Taoiseach. You can come back in.

There will be a relentless focus on this for the lifetime of this Government.

There continues to be a huge level of vacancies that need to be filled. The Taoiseach keeps on blaming the 2022 High Court judgment which found the Government to be in breach of legislation. When will the Government get children the access to what they urgently require rather than blaming that judgment? This Friday, a group of 50 parents will hold a sleep-out outside the Department of Education because their children cannot get the school places they need. Parents should not have to sleep out in order to assert the rights of their children to access an education they desperately need. When is this going to change? When will there be enough school places for children with additional needs? When is the Government going to stop failing children with additional needs? When will the vacant and empty posts be filled on the children's disability network teams?

I will come back on the situation on the CDNTs. That recruitment continues.

On education, it should be acknowledged that there has been a huge increase in public expenditure, and rightly so, on special education. It now constitutes 25% of the overall education budget, or about €3 billion now. Money, however, does not mean a whole lot to people if they are waiting for school places. We have some 23,000 special needs assistants now in our schools. We have 20,800 special education teachers. The number of special classes has doubled in the last five years to 3,336, serving 20,000 students, and 11 new special schools have been established, with five more planned for this school year 2025-26. With regard to the September deadline, the Minister for Education is clear that we want to ensure all children get a place by September. Working with the NCSE, we will focus very strongly on that.

On the education side, there has been significant progress over the last number of years. We just have to make sure that the system is almost automatic in that children or their parents should not have to be under pressure in trying to secure a place for their child.

The Taoiseach's time is up.