John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Regardless of the efforts that are made through the HSE, the answer is always, "Yes, you can get that service in the other administrative area [which might be in the Carlow side] but there will be a funding issue". That is despite the fact that the funding issue has already been addressed by virtue of the fact that the patient or client is receiving the services within the HSE area but across the border. These issues appear to be easy to resolve but they have been around for as long as I have been dealing with them. Will you kindly address that in the context of the letter you received?

The other fact the groups point to is the gaps in early assessment and the waiting times of more than one year for vital services such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and psychology. These are placing children with disabilities at risk of regression and denying them the chance to reach their full potential. The groups go on to point to the figures they recently obtained from the HSE. There are 1,940 children waiting in excess of one year for speech and language assessment. A further 2,983 have already been assessed as requiring the service but they are on the waiting list for at least a year without receiving the treatment. In addition, 2,090 children are waiting at least 12 months for an OT service, which is essential to assist them in accomplishing everyday tasks such as eating, dressing or writing, and 7,301 people, including children, are waiting for more than one year to receive physiotherapy. Eleven local health areas remain without an early intervention team.

They are drawing attention to this and have asked the Committee of Public Accounts to get from the HSE, in a clear, legible format, the total allocated budget in each of the areas of speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and psychology, a breakdown by each of the four HSE areas for children with disabilities for each year from January 2011 up to now and to deal with the actual spend, that is, what the budget was, what was actually spent and a breakdown within the areas. You should be able to get that for us.

They include in their submission a letter from a parent, which explains it quite well. They talk about the services that are available for children aged 16 to 18. Amanda is a seven year old girl with Down syndrome. She has been diagnosed with moderate intellectual disability, moderate visual impairment and she has an ongoing cardiac condition. She has been under the services of St. Catherine's Association in Wicklow since her birth. However, she was under the care of the HSE in a pilot programme at the time the letter was written. At that time there was no speech and language therapy and no occupational therapy being offered. When she had initial contact with the multi-disciplinary team, it said that there would be one therapy session per term. The day the parent attended to have that explained to her, without the child, it was considered to be one of the therapy sessions for that year. The parent has another child of four years of age, typically developed with slight problems of pronunciation and so forth. As that child was in a different age group she got eight weeks of one-to-one treatment. However, the child that required it most got none.

That case, without highlighting any more of it, spells out the dilemma in which that family and the groups find themselves. As it involves services, cost of services and so forth, I ask, on their behalf, that the time would be taken by somebody to analyse what is said in the submission, what is being delivered on the ground and to give the figures associated with each and every request in it. That is not unreasonable. I could table a string of parliamentary questions but that is not what is required here. Unfortunately for the groups concerned, we did not get the opportunity to advise them of this meeting or the fact that we were raising it here, but I ask you to deal with it.