Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)

The first issue the Deputy raised was around occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and CORU. These are some of the conversations we are having at meetings of the Cabinet subcommittee on disability. The Minister for Health, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, has met with CORU on speech and language therapists and occupational therapists because it all feeds into the assessments of need and access to therapies. Work is under way on that. It is a huge issue. The Deputy is absolutely right we need to expedite the process of qualification for somebody well qualified from another country when they are ready to engage and work in CDNTs, schools, etc.

The primary medical certificate was raised earlier and the Deputy is correct. I think we all have examples of people coming into our constituency offices who want to live independently, drive themselves to work and do the normal things everybody else does. It was reviewed by the Department of Finance and is with transport now. As part of our national disability strategy - I come back to that all the time - there are certain levers I, as Minister of State with responsibility for disability, can pull. That is where the Cabinet committee will work. The action plan will be implemented alongside the national disability strategy. Every Minister has disability in his or her area, whether it is the Minister for Finance, Minister for justice, Minister for Health or Minister for education. We need to see that level of ambition. It includes the primary medical certificate, which is not working as efficiently and appropriately as it should. Work is happening on that.

I want to say generally on the assessment of need that people do not need an assessment to get an SNA. These are examples of unnecessary demand on the assessment of need process. That is feeding into the waiting lists. People feel it is required when it is not. That is another area we are looking at within the assessment of need process. It is about recruitment drives and getting more speech and language therapists and dieticians, but it is also looking at which Departments are inadvertently or indirectly asking for an assessment of need when it is not required. That is putting unnecessary pressure on the system. Therapists are carrying out the assessment and not spending their time doing therapies, which is what people ultimately want.