Ms Anne O'Connor:

The Deputy referred to figures. From our March data, we are aware that more than 94% of people who were referred to speech and language therapy and physiotherapy were seen within 52 weeks. One could argue that this is still a long time if one has a child waiting for a service, but it is more than 94% now, which is better than it used to be. We are definitely challenged in the context of occupational therapy and we are working on this. There are some important aspects to note. There are 100 posts, as the Minister indicated, notifications of which are going out to the CHOs this week. These posts are particularly for disability services and will help with some of those therapy waiting lists.

On shifting the model of care, we also have a therapy in schools project in CHO 7 in the Kildare area. We are aware that early prevention is key, especially with children, and the initiative has some 30 therapists working across all the schools. The idea is to pick up children much earlier in order that they do not require the service further down the road. This pilot project has proven to be very positive and successful. We are looking at models and building on this integration across our community services. Within the community we are not always that integrated, never mind between community and hospital, so our first step is to have the community services integrated. We will have nine learning sites for community health networks this year and that will allow us to apply a population view in how we deliver services. There is a lot of duplication with people sitting on different lists; the same child could be sitting on a number of lists. If we tackle it from the population perspective within the network, this will allow us to co-ordinate the delivery of care in a much more streamlined and effective way. We have a number of things going on but I take the point that was made. We are absolutely trying to improve access to community services.