Ms Anne O'Connor:

Across all of our clinical posts, and not just in speech and language therapy, we try to prioritise replacement. With such a high level of a female workforce, referenced earlier, we can have very high rates of maternity leave, which we do not always cover. It depends on the criticality of the post and how long a person will be gone. We take into account a number of factors but we can end up paying for a post twice when somebody is on maternity leave and we replace her. That is not to say we never do it. We do, but we must take into account the wider context in terms of affordability within the area. We do not automatically replace everybody who goes.