Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)

I apologise for being late, but I was attending the health committee.

From what has been said, we have the three strands of access to therapies, primary care and CDNTs, and it is now proposed to add education. I am interested in what was said about the ability to deliver therapies in a school setting for children with special and additional needs. On the availability of the parents, a lot of the anecdotal stories I heard from the teaching profession were how it discommoded students and took students away from the school setting to go to therapies at third sites, including the transport and logistics of that for both the parents and the school. For many of these children, that disruption to their routine can cause quite a bit of trouble. I have talked to therapists who have dealt with children who have arrived at a busy clinic quite upset.

By the time they settle and get into it, the session is over. It is about trying to achieve that balance. Where does Dr. Tamming feel we can achieve it? Should we be considering a model whereby, if we are going to move to the educational setting for some of these children to have their therapies, we make provision for parents to attend? Will there need to be infrastructure in those schools to provide the therapies where a parent is engaged with the therapist, if one-on-one therapy is being delivered at that site?