No money has yet been released from an €8 million Health Service Executive fund for families of children with special needs. The news comes 20 months after the grant was launched and three months after delays were highlighted in the Dáil when Tánaiste Simon Harris pledged to ensure it would be paid.
Sinn Féin finance spokesman Pearse Doherty said the 52 organisations, including four in Donegal, due to benefit from the fund for essential therapies, have now been asked to reapply. He said there was no guarantee they would receive the grant.
The Donegal TD said parents were “seething at what is happening here”.
When Mr Doherty raised the issue in the Dáil in March, Mr Harris pledged the funding would be provided and expressed regret it had taken so long.
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The funding for essential therapies for children with additional needs was promised in 2023 and then re-announced a year later.
A nine-year-old Donegal boy, Jack McGahern Donaghey, who has cerebral palsy,uses a wheelchair and needs physiotherapy and speech and language therapy, took part in a photograph with ministers in 2024.
In March 2025, when no funding had been released, his mother, Denise McGahern, said she felt her son had been used as a “prop in a photo opportunity”.
In the Dáil on Thursday, Mr Doherty told the Tánaiste “despite your promises, here we are three months on and still no funding being released”.
He said “ministers of your previous cabinet went to Donegal, announced specific money, multiannual money for these projects”.
“You promised that you would make sure that it was being provided. Not just that it was sanctioned and released, but that it was being provided. None of these groups have got it.”
One organisation had been promised €3 million over a three-year period, he added. But, holding up a letter the organisations had received, he said: “They’ve been told that they have to reapply for shortlisting, that the funding is no longer multiannual.
“The fund needs to be spent by the end of the year. They only have to the end of the year to spend money, but you haven’t even given it yet.”
Mr Harris said that on March 25th this year the Department of Children, Disability and Equality secured sanction for the €8 million grant fund to come from the €3.2 billion disability services budget.
“So from the Government’s point of view, once it was sanctioned, we expected it to start to be spent, to start being drawn down in light of what you brought to my attention.”
He said he had followed it up and this week he was told “there was some final compliance and governance issues in relation to some projects”.
The Tánaiste said: “It would be useful if we take the Donegal projects as an example to convene a meeting next week of our office members with the relevant HSE and departmental officials.”
He would undertake to get that in place and would talk to Minister for Disability Norma Foley on the issue on Thursday. “From the Government’s perspective, the funding has now been allocated and the funding now needs to be spent quickly” for the benefit of the children.
