Liam Quaide

121. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Minister for Children, Disability and Equality the number of staff assigned to each regional single point of access referral pathway for children's disability and mental health services, including primary care; the number of single point of access units established to date per health region; the disciplines represented on each; and the governance arrangements in p…

The Taoiseach told us this week that the single point of access initiative is being rolled out across child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, children's disability network teams, CDNTs, and primary care so that young people are not languishing on one waiting list after another. There is serious concern, however, within the services that buy-in to the single point of access is not consi…

The single point of access is a sound concept and I fully support it. Young people are, as the Minister of State said, getting passed from one waiting list to the next and that is happening mainly because services have been understaffed for years and they respond to this by becoming more rigid in their gatekeeping of referrals. There is also an issue of power imbalances that we need to focus on. …

The HSE has repeatedly told committees in the Oireachtas that the single point of access will stop children from being moved around the system, between primary care, CDNTs and CAMHS. It is still far from clear how this is meant to work when services fundamentally disagree. That disagreement continues about responsibility for a young person and that is the real test of this reform. Will the Ministe…

I thank Deputy O'Gorman for proposing this motion today. It is particularly welcome because the protection of our natural world and climate action are foundational to everything else but have dropped off the political agenda to an alarming degree. Last week, near Cobh in my own constituency, constituents reported extensive hedgerow destruction during nesting season. The people who witnessed this …

There is a shocking double standard in how mental health services for young people with intellectual disabilities are staffed compared with mainstream CAMHS. In mainstream CAMHS, multidisciplinary staffing is treated as basic good practice. Yet in CAMHS-ID teams, for a group of children with even more complex needs, there is a far lower standard set by the Government. There is not a single CAMHS-I…

4. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the progress his Department is making in tackling child poverty. [23830/26]

20. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach for an overview of the Budget 2026: Spotlight on Disability report recently published by his Department. [26938/26]

Does the Government accept that disability service delivery in this State has become extraordinarily fragmented and that this fragmentation is making it impossible to guarantee equity, to plan services properly or to ensure public money is being used in the most effective way? I ask this because a recent response to a parliamentary question of mine shows that the HSE now has approximately 1,172 se…

I thank Sinn Féin for bringing this motion to the House this evening. Early intervention classes are a pivotal part of the continuum of support for children with additional needs and autistic children who are not yet ready to transition to a special class or into school more generally, yet an insidious pattern is emerging in the treatment of early intervention classes. They are being slowly but su…

The cost of energy is one pressure among many bearing down on families already dealing with soaring costs of rent, groceries, insurance and transport. For many families, there is simply no give left in the monthly budget. The Government's response to the energy crisis so far amounts to a very expensive, broad-brush set of measures that leave clear gaps and whose modest effect will evaporate quickl…

6. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach to report on his recent visit to China. [18161/26]

25. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on justice, migration and social affairs will next meet. [23829/26]

5. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Minister for Rural and Community Development and the Gaeltacht the measures in place to ensure equitable distribution of funding across regions, including areas experiencing rapid population growth; and whether any formal methodology is used to align funding allocations with demographic need. [23002/26]

How can the Minister of State ensure that funding from his Department is shared fairly across regions, especially in areas of major population growth? Is there any clear formula for matching that funding to population growth? I ask this with particular reference to Midleton and Carrigtwohill where major population increases are projected over the next decade, but where local amenities are plainly …

What people see in towns like Midleton and Carrigtohill is residential development moving ahead much faster than amenity provision. New houses are being built at pace and more families are moving in, but the facilities which are core to community life are lagging badly behind. There is a sense that many families describe of being in a town that is thriving but impoverished in respect of the most b…

Under the current disjointed system, families are having to spend years campaigning for basic amenities. They are being forced to become fundraisers, social entrepreneurs and project managers trying to patch together one disconnected grant after another while their town or village expands around them, and their children often outgrow the project before it is finally delivered, as in the case of pl…

I have had a couple of adversarial exchanges with the Taoiseach in this House, but I will be the first person to applaud him if he intervenes in the situation facing healthcare workers with long Covid. He met a group of these workers last June. He knows that their case is genuine and that they have suffered terribly not just with their symptoms but also with being on a financial cliff edge every s…

I came in just after Deputy Ó Murchú started.

Is this amendments Nos. 1 and 4?

I have lost track a little bit here. I will pass over.

I echo the point made by Deputy Ó Murchú. Research undertaken by the National Disability Authority has indicated that people have not been supported sufficiently to understand what the end of the wardship system means for them and those supporting them. We must ensure that all those who come within the scope of the original Act, namely, disabled people, older people and people with severe mental h…

5. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his attendance at the most recent meeting of the coalition of the willing in support of Ukraine. [16305/26]

17. Deputy Liam Quaide asked the Taoiseach if he will report on his Department's statement of strategy for 2025 to 2028. [18160/26]

The mental health strategy, A Vision for Change, is now 20 years old, but the State is still nowhere near providing the specialist multidisciplinary teams it promised for older people in that document. There are large parts of the country, including Dublin south-west, Limerick city-Tipperary north, Cork north and east, and Cork south and west, where the HSE has approved no occupational therapy pos…