Children's disability network teams of health and social care professionals provide services to children and young people aged 18 with complex needs. These interdisciplinary teams include professionals like occupational therapists, psychologists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, dieticians and social workers. The objectives of the teams are to support a child's development, well-being and participation in family and community life on the basis of an individual family support plan. All of these are necessary and essential. However, the teams based in Clonmel are almost non-existent and the service is almost non-existent. There is no occupational therapist, no psychologist, no physiotherapist and no dietician on the team. These children are obviously being failed by the HSE and the Government. Can the Taoiseach give any indication as to when the vacancies on these teams will be filled and the service provided?

There has been a national recruitment campaign in respect of CDNTs. The vacancies have reduced significantly but there are still vacancies, and I acknowledge that. Parallel with that, we are developing the school therapy service, which will help in time when special schools in particular will have multidisciplinary teams as a result of that initiative. We have provided an additional €20 million this year in terms of people accessing private services and we have also continued to allocate for additional recruitment of therapists to the CDNTs.