Mr. Pat Healy:

As part of rolling out that new programme which joins up the services provided by voluntary providers, the HSE locally, the Department of Education and Skills and schools, 80 posts were made available last year, 33 of which were speech and language posts. This year, 120 posts have been made available with 50 of these being speech and language. We certainly recognise the importance of meeting the challenge of dealing with waiting lists for speech and language therapy services for children.