Brendan Griffin (Kerry South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise as I had to meet Inland Fisheries Ireland while three other meetings went on and missed the presentation. I want to refer to a case that has arisen in the mid-Kerry area, where services are being reconfigured.

St. Francis special school in Beaufort has encountered huge difficulties since last autumn in providing occupational therapy, speech and language therapy and physiotherapy to its students. The experience of the 52 children attending that school has been appalling and very upsetting for their parents. Many of the children have regressed because of the inadequate level of services.

I very much welcome the provision of 80 additional posts nationwide, four of which have been allocated to Kerry in recognition of the reconfiguration process that has taken place there. The fact remains, however, that the reconfiguration has left huge gaps in the service and children have suffered immensely because of it. Will the delegates indicate whether similar problems have arisen in other counties? When will we see the full allocation of those 80 posts and what guarantees can be given to children and their families that they will receive the services they require? Nobody is looking for a luxury service here. I recently visited a mother whose son struggles to swallow and cough. The lack of services available to him has led to his regressing so far that he developed a chest infection because he was not able to cough. That is how fundamental these services are; it is basic stuff, not anything fancy.