The Government recognises the importance of early intervention for children with disabilities and ensuring they receive the right services at the right time. Under the programme for Government, we are committed to ensuring children and their families who need early intervention and therapy input can access it in a timely way. The key vehicle for change and improvement is the roadmap for service improvement for disability services for children and young people. The implementation of this roadmap is well under way an…

We are doing a number of things in recruitment and retention. We have bursaries in place. We are opening up HSE panels. We have HSE advertising streams. We also have a number of fairs, including one in May where one of the top priorities was to recruit people and to introduce people to social care therapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. We have 150 extra therapists going through our third level institutions and there will be more again this year. We are looking at therapy assistants.…

I assure Deputy Lawless that absolutely everything is being done. What is happening now is what I have just listed out. We also have domestic and international recruitment drives happening all the time, as we speak. We also have an expedited CORU registration process from this year. This is specifically for people who may have trained abroad and want to come here to work. We want to expedite this process. It has already been expedited. We are looking at absolutely everything. If there are particular cases, and Depu…

Deputy Lawless can come back to me afterwards.

I thank the Deputy. On 26 April 2023, the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015, along with most of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act 2022, were commenced, replacing the wards of court system. That Act places individuals at the centre of decisions that affect them and provides for the necessary supports to enable persons with capacity difficulties to retain control over their own affairs and the decisions that affect them. One of the principles of the Act is that a person is presumed to…

As the Deputy was speaking, I was reminded of people in a similar situation who have come into my constituency office. Often they are parents who have a grown-up adult child. Their question is what will happen to their child when the parents pass away. We cannot always answer those questions, but they will be looked after. It is all about this forward planning and having the data. As the Deputy knows, we are working on a national disability strategy, which will be published over the coming weeks. These are the ques…

Both Deputies have raised important points. For example, when somebody is leaving the school setting, there needs to be a transition. We are doing work in that regard. The person-centred plan has been developed with each person, his or her family and his or her support person, looking at ensuring that this person with a disability is making informed choices about what he or she wants to do, be it a job, training or a day service. A few weeks ago, the Ministers, Deputies Foley and Calleary, and I launched the wage s…

Ireland ratified the UNCRPD in 2018. Since ratification, Ireland's approach has been to ensure cumulative advancements over time. The programme for Government commits to delivering a new national disability strategy that will provide an overarching framework for advancing the State’s obligations under the UNCRPD. In advance of the strategy, work continues unabated across government to advance implementation, with achievements including: increases in funding for disability services, including €3.2 billion in budget …

I will answer the Deputy's last question first. Housing and disability are absolute priority for the Government. We all know knocking on the doors in the general election campaign the importance of disability right across the sector. Last week, I attended the United Nations disability conference in New York. The Irish delegation travelled with leading disability groups from Ireland who have directly fed into this national disability strategy. Once this strategy is published - and the timeline for that will be befor…

There has been, and there will continue to be, robust consultation with all the key stakeholders, disability groups and DPOs. To give the Deputy an example of our track record on that, for this disability strategy we had extensive public consultation, which concluded last year. That included 34 focus groups and almost 500 responses to a national questionnaire. We had town hall events in Dublin, Cork, Galway and online feeding into this disability strategy. The consultation has continued on an alternative basis with…

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. The overarching aim of the neuro-rehabilitation strategy is the development of neuro-rehabilitation services to improve patient outcomes by providing safe, high-quality, person-centred neuro-rehabilitation at the lowest appropriate level of complexity. It straddles acute hospitals and primary care as well as specialist community-based disability services. The past few years have seen consistent funding being provided to advance the roll-out of the neuro-rehabilit…

This is a new structure being rolled out. It has taken the team a little time to set up the structures. The funding was in place and they are now rolling out those teams across the country. We will complete the national roll-out of the HSE community neuro-rehabilitation teams. We will develop more regional inpatient rehabilitation beds as well, implement community-based, multidisciplinary rehabilitation services in every regional health area, and increase the number of neurology nurse specialists and consultant neu…

I thank both Deputies. I am looking forward to my visit to An Síol tomorrow morning and to seeing the Deputy there. I know they are doing fantastic work there on the ground. I am visiting these services throughout the country. When I am in these services, I meet people who have acquired brain injuries. I see the results of road traffic accidents and the importance of these facilities on the ground within communities. It is great to be in this position. I am honoured to be and to be able to fund such services that d…

I thank Deputy Coppinger for raising this important issue, which I will bring to the attention of the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan. I am taking this on his behalf. The enormous contribution made by migrant workers, particularly those working in the health sector, is recognised and valued by this Government. It is a central priority for the Minister that our immigration laws are fair and efficient. An important part of this is having legal pathways for workers and their families. I am advised by the Minister that th…

I thank the Deputy. I, and the Minister, Deputy O'Callaghan, also recognise and acknowledge the contributions that migrants and their families bring to our economy and our society as a whole. The Minister's Department is committed to ensuring we provide legal pathways for economic migration that are fair, efficient and responsive to the needs of the economy. While the Minister cannot pre-empt the changes to be introduced to his Department's family reunification policy until that review has been concluded, he can as…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. He can be assured when I came into this role our CDNTs and that step change in disabilities service are an absolute priority. As he will know, we are working on a national disability strategy at the higher end where every single Department will have to feed in what they are going to do. Whether it is the Departments of Justice, Health, Social Protection, transport, or enterprise, that step change will be required right across Government. Regarding the issue of assessments …

The Deputy's first question veered into another area, so the response to that is in the written reply. I am having pre-Estimate discussions with the Ministers for public expenditure and Finance for the upcoming budget. What we all need to see is an increase in the budget and support for our day, respite and residential services right across the country to ensure that there is a good geographical spread and that, no matter where one is living, access to the disability services one requires is not based on a postcode…

I thank the Deputies for raising this matter. I am taking this on behalf of the Minister for Transport, who has responsibility for overall policy and Exchequer funding relating to the national roads programme. Once funding arrangements have been put in place with TII, under the Roads Acts 1993 to 2015, and in line with the national development plan, NDP, the operation and management of individual national roads is a matter for TII, in conjunction with the local authorities concerned. TII ultimately delivers the nat…

I will raise the matter with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. Approximately €502 million of Exchequer capital funds has been provided to TII for national roads in 2025. In line with the NDP and Government policy, TII has sought to allocate national road funding to local authorities in a manner that seeks to achieve the following key outcomes: protection and renewal of the existing national road network; progressing major projects in or near construction; and progressing major projects that are at an earlier st…

I thank Senator Byrne for giving me the opportunity to update the House on this important matter. I am taking this Commencement matter on behalf of the Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill. The Minister for Health and I are dedicated to enhancing Ireland’s population screening programmes, which play a crucial role in our health services by facilitating early treatment and care for many people, thereby promoting the overall health of our community. In this regard, I highlight that any proposed changes to Ire…