Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)

There is a real need to increase the HSE's own capacity here. In speech and language therapy, there is a steady output of 120 to 140 new graduates across Trinity, UCC, UL and Galway, yet in 2014 only 35 speech and language therapists were hired at staff grade. This year, 44 were hired, so there has been an increase but in 2021, the HSE hired 149 and in 2022, it hired 150. There is a leaking pipe. We are training these graduates but not retaining them, and we are going to outsource the waiting list. What is the reason for that drop in the hiring of speech and language therapists?