Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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I thank the Minister of State. She has finished where I wanted to start. As Deputy Tully said, I often hear from families who have tried to source an assessment or intervention in the private market and are unable to do so or are still facing long waiting lists. There is a wider issue of recruitment and, as the Minister of State has said, therapists are a finite resource. There is a challenge with lots of allied professionals in that, while capturing them when they exit college is very important, they are not joining college in the first place. This is for a variety of reasons, one of which is addressed in recommendation 7, which reads, "Student therapists must receive remuneration for their internship and placement work." Recommendation 8 talks about the need for special grants towards fees and costs associated with training. Having spoken to academics and people in a couple of different allied health professional fields, there is a challenge that they cannot get students in the door. If we cannot even get students in the door, whatever we do to try and capture them at the other end is not going to produce any excess in the number of therapists. I appreciate this is in some ways a matter for the Department of further and higher education, but I would like to hear some more about recommendations 7 and 8. We need to progress these recommendations. All the work the Minister of State is trying to do to capture students at the end of college is not going to make a difference if they are not going in in the first place. I will leave it there for the minute.