Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to go back to the enhanced in-school therapy pilot that is coming down the line from September. I began my career in a special school that was within a pilot programme at the time called Ábalta. We had a fantastic model. A private speech and language therapist who was funded by the school's fundraising, Mari Caulfield, would come in every single week. There would be kids rostered to see her but not on a formal basis. It was done according to the needs of the school. She would be there for the day and would come back the following week on the same day. We also had Dr. Olive Healy who would attend as a behaviour support specialist in the very same way. We had various occupational therapists, OTs, at different times. They had a rota of children to see and across a couple of months they made sure to see everyone regularly. It was very much based on the needs of the school and it worked exceptionally well.

In autism classes or different special schools, we mainly had speech and language therapists coming in, along with some OTs. There was often a fall-down when there might not have time set aside by teachers. The speech and language therapist might have been in the room one-to-one with the child so there was no carry-over. On a regular basis, the parents were not invited in so there was not that carry-over. In regard to the pilot coming down the line, what will the model be? Will a speech and language therapist be assigned to a certain number of schools and be available to consult generally with each school, or is it going back to the one-to-one model? Are we looking at best practices across the globe here? Who are the stakeholders or the advisers when it comes to planning this?