Disability Services Provision
Seanad Éireann — 2021-03-12
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Anne Rabbitte (FF), Galway East

The Senator is right because I have been approached by my colleague, Deputy Cormac Devlin, and Deputy Jennifer Carroll MacNeill has come to me about the Carmona School. I have heard about it from all over the country. The Government has taken control of this issue. I took control of it last Monday and I have continuously engaged with the HSE for the past week.
I will now read an important piece. In the context, the HSE introduced the national policy on access to services for children and young people with disability and development delay to ensure that children are directed to the appropriate service based on the complexity of their presenting needs rather than based on diagnosis. If a child travels from Galway or Donegal to attend a special school for deaf children or the hard of hearing, that is his or her specialist school. So it is up to every CHO to understand the national policy, and how they implement it and how they communicate it. It is very clear to me regarding communication within the HSE that while I am dealing with the best of people at the top they are not understanding the policy at a CHO level. I rest my case.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2021-03-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-03-12