I am speaking to the section, recognising the fact that the amendments the Senator put down on this point were ruled out of order. Nevertheless, regarding the significance of these issues, I try to speak to them out of respect for them while recognising the same issues are coming up in amendments later on that have been held to be in order. The eligibility criteria for the enhanced medical card was approved by Government at the time of the publication of the commission's final report. The qualifying timeframe of 18…

I thank Deputy O'Reilly for raising this important issue. At the outset, I want to state that the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I recognise the very real impact that delays in receiving therapies or assessments have had for children and their families. Deputy O'Reilly has spoken powerfully about its impact on Alison, Mark and most importantly, on Ada. The progressing disability services, PDS, programme has been challenging for many stakeholders but most importantly for children and young people using the …

I thank the Deputy again for highlighting this issue. She speaks of the parents she has met in her constituency. I am in a neighbouring constituency and have also met parents who are equally frustrated and angry and understandably so. The key way to address this is to get more staff. We need to retain the staff we have and recruit more. That is why we have been working very closely with the HSE on the roadmap which will set out concrete measures that can deliver more therapists, in both the short and longer term. T…

I welcome today’s motion. I thank the Regional Group for highlighting this important issue. As Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, the issue of accessibility and having appropriate transport and mobility supports is raised with me frequently by people with disabilities. It is an issue on which the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I are focused. There is a complexity to the transport issue, which I acknowledge at the very outset of our discussions today. Policies, services and …

Nothing has been put on the back burner. At the time, I said we were initiating a process with a number of the religious orders. I met a number of them. That process is ongoing. I also always said the priority was the passage of the legislation that would allow for the-----

-----payment of redress. As I said, those negotiations are ongoing. I do not believe one can have a genuine negotiation and hold one in public at the same time, so once those negotiations are completed we will bring an update to Dáil Éireann.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important topic. Myself, the Minster for Health, Deputy Donnelly, the Minster for Justice, Deputy Harris, and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, have all engaged directly with and have received correspondence from families affected by surrogacy. One cannot help but be moved by their stories but also by their desire to be recognised by the State as the parents of their children. Developing legislative proposals to amend the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 …

Today, I am bringing the Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme Bill 2022 before this House. This Bill, when enacted, will allow the Government to deliver a statutory scheme that will provide financial payments and a form of enhanced medical card to thousands of mother and baby and county home institution survivors. I look forward to working with Senators to discuss the Bill further over the coming weeks, and I extend my thanks to those Senators who were on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Children, Equality,…

I thank the Senators for their detailed engagement with the debate and discussion today. I thank those who have joined us to listen both in the Chamber and online. We all recognise that this scheme is awaited by survivors. It is critical that we get the legislative framework in place as soon as possible. Any scheme brought forward by a Government cannot meet all expectations. I recognise that in bringing this forward. I appreciate there is a real depth of feeling, held by many, that the scheme does not go far enoug…

I thank Deputy McDonald. The Government agrees with the importance of ratifying the optional protocol and it is set out in the programme for Government. An important step towards achieving that was the passage earlier this year of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act 2022. That Act will be enacted later this month and the various processes that flow from that enactment will then be put in place, particularly the full operation of the Decision Support Service. The Office of the Attorney General is…

The programme for Government sets out an objective to ratify the optional protocol and it is something the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I are working to achieve. A key step towards that was achieved by the passing of the Assisted Decision-making (Capacity) (Amendment) Act 2022. All the various elements of that are going to be commenced next week, including the operationalisation of the decision support service. The Office of the Attorney General is currently undertaking a review of other legislation to s…

I thank the Deputy. In January 2022, the Government agreed that issues relating to international surrogacy required further detailed consideration and agreed to the establishment of a special Joint Oireachtas Committee on International Surrogacy. Following the publication of the final report of the committee in July 2022, officials from my Department joined colleagues from the Department of Health and the Department of Justice to form an interdepartmental group to analyse the report and make legislative proposals. …

I am aware of the very pressing needs for parents with children where those legal relations have not been properly established. That being said, I do not think we could promise to provide for the retrospective element beforehand. This has to be done in the one package. The Government has committed to addressing the issue of retrospective parentage and has set out a range of criteria in terms of how that will be assessed. These criteria will include establishing that the surrogacy was not unlawful at the time in the…

Being honest, as mine is not the lead Department, I cannot give the Deputy a specific timeframe. I will speak to the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, and get back to her directly to give her an indication on times. Following the publication of the proposals in December, I was contacted by groups such as LGBT Ireland. It had flagged some concerns, particularly for same-sex female couples and how it felt some of the elements did not cover them. I have raised that with both the Department of Justice and the Department of He…

I will.

To answer the question very directly, I have not had a formal meeting with the Taoiseach or the Minister for Health since responsibility came over to my Department on 1 March on this specific issue. However, both myself and the Minister of State with special responsibility for disability, Deputy Rabbitte, and our officials, are engaging with all relevant Departments and stakeholders, such as the HSE and the relevant section 38 and 39 providers, on a range of issues to enhance capacity across children’s disability n…

A range of issues is impacting on our ability to recruit new staff and retain existing staff across the CDNT network. Undoubtedly, pay is one of those. It is also fair to say that even in HSE-led CDNTs we are having problems regarding recruitment and retention as well. I do not think it is solely because of the pay differential between HSE-led and section 38- or section 39-led CDNTs. I do not want to minimise, however, the significance of this issue either. As I mentioned earlier, one aspect in this regard is the r…

As I said, the issue of recruitment and retention in CDNTs is the top priority for the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and me. We will look to support all measures that we can see that will start to address the major issues in this context. I recognise that pay and the pay differential are part of this issue. We have seen that issues concerning organisations providing services to the HSE have been addressed in the past. I am thinking especially of the way in which the hospices have recently been addressed. The …

We had a useful discussion on this matter in the Seanad yesterday. The board of St. John Ambulance Ireland commissioned an independent review to be carried out by Dr. Geoffrey Shannon into the handling of complaints of historical sexual abuse of members under 18. This was a step I had urged the organisation to undertake following my own engagement with victims of abuse within the organisation. My Department is giving urgent consideration to the findings and recommendations of the review report by Dr. Geoffrey Shann…

While we all welcome that this report was undertaken, that it was published and that St. John Ambulance has committed to implementing all its recommendations, it is not acceptable that it took this huge level of pressure, primarily applied by the victims of abuse in this organisation, and nearly everyone here would have engaged with one or more of those victims, to bring about this development. This situation is not acceptable and it is important we recognise this. As I said, the report is very scathing in places a…