Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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The Senator is correct that there is a significant gap between assessment and therapy. I am trying to get to a point where we do not have a backlog for assessments of need and timely intervention and therapy become the priority. The Senator and I have both seen the letters to say that a person is on a two-year waiting list for speech and language therapy. That is unacceptable. We have to stop that and we have to get to the root of delivering therapy. The Senator talked about people in contact tracing and swabbing. At the moment, there is nobody from the network disability teams involved in contact tracing and there are nine from primary care. Last September and October, when I started to have these conversations, there were 866 involved in swabbing. That 866 is down to 189. It is still 189 too many and I will not justify it, but at the same time, I want to demonstrate where we have come from and what we are trying to get back into the teams, for the simple reason that that leads directly to the unmet need of the children and families, the frustration of families and how they must feel, that nobody is thinking of their child or their child's education. That is why I have met with Mr. Paul Reid and spoken with the Minister, Deputy Donnelly. In fairness to the HSE, the Department of Health and the Minister, they are acknowledging it and getting a turnaround.

My next step in that is to ensure, in the roll-out of the vaccines, that our front-line clinicians do not become a casualty of delivering the vaccination. After we got disability acknowledged as an essential service in September, clinicians have returned to posts and the reconfiguration of the children's network disability teams is taking place. We are down to the last seven team leads in the 91 different positions around the country. That is right across the country. We should build on those teams and ensure that those staff do not become part of the vaccination programme. They need to stay to address the unmet need and support the families that the Senator speaks about. We do not want to see those families left for another year without timely intervention.

Regarding CHO 8, as of 30 June, it had 764 children awaiting an assessment of need. As of the end of September, it had 698; at the end of October, it had 630; and as of 30 November, it was back down to 475. Some 66 were completed in September, 68 in October, and 155 in November. The target for completion there is February. I have spoken to the lead for AONs.