Ms Maria Gleeson-Cary:

On the issue of schools, we advocate for and strongly support the return of speech and language therapists to special schools but we would be very clear that it should not impact on the resourcing of, or service delivery within, the children's disability network teams. Again, in terms of equity, all children who require a speech and language therapy service, whether they are in special schools, special classes or mainstream classes, should have access to that service. We would agree with the Deputy's point about a rights-based approach around Article 24, which is very clear about the need to support an inclusive environment. Here in Ireland and internationally there is a lot of evidence about different pilot schemes and programmes that have been put in place already. We have the school inclusion model, the ABC programme, the therapy in school demonstration project and we have speech and language therapists as part of the regional support group for the NCSE.

There is a lot of evidence to show the effectiveness, positive outcomes and importance of having speech and language therapists and occupational therapy in schools. We need to move from pilots and programmes to a national strategic plan, again with timelines and somebody actually following through and it not being piecemeal across the country.