Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have a question on the child disability network teams, the census and the workforce review 2021 and I am looking at CHO 8. The vacancies in CHO 8 were as follow: speech and language therapy had 32% vacancies; occupational therapy had 36% vacancies; psychology had 41% vacancies; physiotherapy had 26% vacancies; and social work had 37% vacancies. We get constant complaints from parents that they cannot get assessments or access therapy for their children. Unfortunately time does not allow us to go into this matter in depth, and we could devote a session to it. What is being done to fill these positions? Is there workforce planning? Are the third level institutions being contacted about this? Are people being encouraged to take up study for these positions? What is the current situation? I am just giving the example of CHO 8 but if you look at it up to 40% of positions are empty across some of these therapy positions. Services cannot be provided and there is a constant problem. What is being done about it?