Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I presume if that was the answer to the parliamentary question it is the full factual position, but I will double-check for her. It is worth stating the role of my Department versus the role of other Departments. I effectively see my Department as a bit of a service provider from a public service point of view. A line Department can come to my Department and say it needs more places in medicine, nursing and speech and language therapy and then it is up to the Department to work with that Department to try to provide those places. I have written to every member of the Cabinet at least once, but probably more than once, to make them aware of that. Workforce planning is something I genuinely think the country needs to get a lot better at.

What I am saying today is not just that people are sitting down having conversations about it, but that we picked medicine last year and we made very good progress, in fairness to colleagues in the Department of Health. They identified that there was a need for at least 200 more undergraduate places in Ireland and we got agreement to put those in place over the next five years and an agreement on funding. Crucially, we got the clinical placements too, because we cannot train a doctor without that. We are now going to do the same with therapies. The Deputy could ask me to create 100 more engineering places today. I do not mean to be flippant, but we probably could. We could fund the universities and they would create the places but, as she will be aware, every place must be matched with a clinical placement and that is why it requires that working-together piece. We have a very active piece of work going on now on therapy places. The Deputy referred to nine places. In medicine, the number of extra places created was in single digits in September 2021. This year, the number of extra places was 60 and next year it will be at least another 60. It is an example of how we can begin to scale it up if we put a focus on it. I assure the Deputy that therapies and nursing are priority areas. They have been chosen for that exercise. My colleagues are engaging intensively with the Departments of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, and Health on those issues.

I will take a look at the Trinity Centre for People with Intellectual Disabilities and access to supports. The Deputy is correct to highlight the anomaly that if one is doing a level 5 in one place, one gets support but that one would not get it in another location. We will see if we can move on that in the months ahead. In general, we find that sometimes students with a disability are accessing other supports as well and, therefore, I need to look at it all in the round. I would like to do a lot more on registration fees in the years ahead. The registration fee this year was tied to the €3,000 registration fee for the free fees initiative. Many tens of thousands of people did benefit, but I accept that some did not. We will look and see if we can build on that in the next budget.