Parents of pupils attending a special school in Carrigaline, Co Cork, say they are under intolerable stress because therapists promised for the school have not started working with their children yet.
The parents say they were also promised that the children would be given access to overnight respite care but, so far, their children have not been offered respite.
Carrigaline Community Special School opened in September 2021 to address a chronic shortage of special school places for children aged four to 18 in the Cork area.
By the following September, it was at its capacity of 48 pupils.
Cork Education and Training Board (ETB) was appointed patron of the school and Carrigaline was the first special school to be opened under its patronage.
Cork ETB has no direct access to overnight respite services and no direct access to respite beds. It also does not have direct access to therapists such as speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists.
As a result, most of the pupils attending Carrigaline Community Special School have had no access to therapy and no access to overnight respite since they entered the school. In some cases that is since September 2021, exactly two years ago.
In fact, in some cases some of these children have never had as much as one night's respite.
When RTÉ News highlighted this in May, parents of some of the children in the school said they were in crisis.
Parents regard the availability of overnight respite services as paramount, to allow them to recharge their batteries - as they describe it - to concentrate on other family members and to give the children themselves an opportunity to develop a measure of independence while they are in respite.
Equally, access to therapies is seen as vital for these children to help them with self-regulation and to allow them to develop their social skills.
In April, Minister of State for Disability Anne Rabbitte told Fianna Fáil Deputy Padraig O'Sullivan, in response to a Dáil question, that the HSE confirmed to her that therapists would be working in Carrigaline Community Special by 1 May. However, this did not happen.
In May, when RTÉ News highlighted the lack of access for children in Carrigaline to overnight respite services while, at the same time, ten children's respite beds were "suppressed" or closed in Cork, there was a furore.
Politicians, including Tánaiste Micheál Martin, Minister for Finance Michael McGrath and Minister for Enterprise Simon Coveney got involved.
In the Dáil on 24 May, Minister Rabbitte described her "frustration" when she heard the news that ten children's respite beds in Cork had been "suppressed" or closed, due to a lack of staffing.
"My understanding is that there should be no idle bed when we have families in crisis," Ms Rabbitte said.
She said she wrote to the HSE suggesting that agency nurses would be employed to staff the suppressed respite beds, to allow them to reopen, until such time as the agencies who run those facilities were given funding to employ their own staff.
"And whatever rate needs to be paid, they need to be [put] up at that rate," Minister Rabbitte said. "I think the HSE knows the ask, and they need to deliver on that."
Notwithstanding the efforts of the Tánaiste, Ministers McGrath and Coveney, parents say their children returned to school in Carrigaline almost a fortnight ago and there were no sign of the therapists who were supposed to start work there four months earlier on 1 May.
While some progress has been made on the respite issue - with children being assessed and put on a waiting list - no child has actually been offered respite, even for a single night, according to parents.
Niamh O'Grady is a parent from Cobh, Co Cork. Her son, 15-year-old Artie, attends school in Carrigaline. He is autistic, has an intellectual disability and has never had respite.
Ms O'Grady says Artie has now been put on a waiting list for respite, but she likens this to her being offered a place on a spaceship by Elon Musk to go to the Moon - she thinks it is never going to happen.
She feels commitments and promises made to the parents in April and May have now been broken.
"It was promised on the Dáil floor that there would be two respite beds, that the ten (beds) would stop being suppressed and would happen for our children in Cork, and that two of them would be ringfenced for children in our school who don't get respite, and there's been no sign of it - nothing," Ms O'Grady said.
"And [we were told] that there would be therapists in the school - no sign of that," she added.
"And I just think: where do we turn? We're in a democracy, and if they take no notice of the politicians, what does that say? It's absolutely outrageous that children are suffering and families are suffering. And there are families suffering an awful lot worse than we are - I know that."
Ms O'Grady's testimony is shared by the majority of parents of children attending the school.
Cork Parents Unite is an advocacy group representing the parents of around 30 of the 48 pupils at Carrigaline.
Cork Parents Unite spokeswoman, Alison Murphy, is adamant that parents are in the same position now as they were in May.
"We're still in the same place," Ms Murphy says. "We have many commitments, many assurances from different people to say that therapists would be in place on 1 May - no therapists [were] in place on 1 May.
"On 31 May we were given assurances that the ten respite beds would be re-opened in a matter of weeks - still no beds."
In a statement, Cork ETB said it was aware that the current level of disability service and respite care available from the HSE to children at Carrigaline Community Special School is, what it described as, "less than adequate".
Cork ETB said it continues to engage with the HSE to ensure that children in all its special schools have access to an appropriate level of both disability services and respite care.
There is a conflict between what parents are saying and what the HSE's Cork Kerry Community Healthcare said in a statement in respect of access to therapists.
The HSE is insisting that therapists are in place at Carrigaline Community Special School to provide speech and language and occupational therapy. It also says a recruitment campaign for psychology hours is ongoing.
The HSE says it deeply regrets the shortage of overnight respite places for children with disabilities in the Cork area and, unfortunately it says, there have not been enough respite beds to meet current demand in Cork. It is blaming this on difficulties in recruiting staff.
It says it is supporting voluntary agencies to re-open those beds that had been suppressed and says there has been progress in recent months, but it does not quantify this progress.
It also refuses to say how many children from Carrigaline Community Special School have actually been offered overnight respite, citing confidentiality reasons.
The HSE says it is working with agencies who deliver respite services with a view to further increasing availability, and it is seeking funding through the National Service Plan 2024 process for that.
