Mr. Mark Smyth:

The Deputy raised a number of important points, particularly concerning our speech and language therapy colleagues who, as much as any profession, have been to the fore in contact tracing and the Covid response. Speech and language services were already threadbare but they have been decimated by that. There has been a very slow response, having spoken to the members of various bodies, in terms of redeploying people back to the services.

As the Deputy mentioned, there was a waiting list of four years. Referrals did not stop because people were redeployed to tackle Covid and kept coming. Therapists returned to provide services with lengthier waiting lists than before the pandemic but that is if people are redeployed back to services. This morning when I spoke to colleagues I found out that psychologists, occupational therapists, and speech and language therapists were redeployed to the AON unit to clear backlogs. They, therefore, went from Covid testing and swabbing to clearing the backlog of legacy assessments. They were moved from their disability and primary care teams but sent to do PTA assessments to conclude that the child needed further assessment. Then they have to return to the services they came from, which have lengthier waiting lists, because they could not do the assessments that were required under the new PTA model.

We need a commitment that the clinicians will be put back on the front line to do their jobs and to provide them with additional staff to support them. If we do not provide additional staff on the ground to meet this need, we will no longer have a disability service because staff will burn out and leave. We will be unable to convince them to work in the disability services in the first place. We need to address this now to address the legacy issue. Last week, the ombudsman captured the scenario well when he said: "In this scenario we are not robbing Peter to pay Paul, we are just robbing Peter." We wholly concur with his conclusion.