Ms Nicola Hart:

I do not understand how the HSE can say it is trying to recruit therapists. The HSE jobs website indicates very few areas are looking for therapists for network disability teams.

I live in Wexford. There is a very limited service in Wexford for parents with children with Down’s syndrome. I do not believe a single job has come up that I could have applied for. I am a CORU-registered speech and language therapist with 30 years’ experience of working with people with disabilities. I do not believe there has been a single job. Where is the HSE recruiting? If it is not recruiting internationally or nationally, how can it say there are no therapists? Unless something dramatic happens, it will be very difficult to retain therapists. A team of ten that should be a team of nearly 40 has a caseload four times greater than it should be. That is depressing. Every parent who comes in through the door is going to be angry. There are so many other jobs available to therapists. They could go into the private sector or community care, where there is not the level of despair that there is in disability services.

I agree with Ms Whitmarsh in that our feedback from families is that the transition to progressing disability services for children and young people has disimproved services. The service has opted much more for the consultancy and parent-training model, which has no evidence to back it up. Is it at such a low level that we are almost wasting money. Money is being spent on therapists who have so little time. There are good therapists. This is a systemic problem, not a therapist problem. Money is being spent on people who are able to have so little contact with families that you almost question whether it is worth it.

I have been talking about senior therapist recruitment.

As for basic grade recruitment of therapists coming out of universities, a basic grade panel is opening now but therapists are graduating at this stage. I know from a colleague in a university that all the final-year graduates there already have jobs and the panel has not even opened yet. That is an entire graduating class that will, potentially, be lost to the Irish system.