Disability Services
Seanad Éireann — 2022-10-13
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Anne Rabbitte (FF), Galway East

The other evening I referred in my speech to Fórsa. It is amazing what happens on the floor of the Dáil because since Tuesday evening, the HSE and Fórsa have met twice and I hear that progress is being made. I also spoke to John Kearney of the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, this morning and I will issue communications to all the special schools. I am waiting for the head of disabilities, Bernard O'Regan, to tell me the outcome of this. I assume everybody wants to see children getting an intervention and being supported. I have no doubt the union wants that as well. I do not want to assume but I am hopeful a common sense approach will be taken and we will see therapists going into the schools. I have allocated €13.5 million to recruit 133 staff to go back on to the teams. While we are taking them from the teams, they are still part of the team and just happen to be spending a certain number of hours supporting the school side.
We have blown the panels open completely because I needed to get as many people as possible into the CDNT teams to support the schools. We abandoned the panels.
To be fair to Damien McCallion in the HSE, he went in there and said they had to tear it apart and blow it open to ensure that we can get everybody off panels and into either the CDNTs or back into the schools. I think I have answered both questions.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2022-10-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:10+00:00
Sitting date: 2022-10-13