Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

I am taking this matter on behalf of my colleague, the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney.

As the House will be aware, the Health Act 2004 provided for the establishment of the Health Service Executive, HSE, which duly came into being on 1 January 2005. Under the Act, the HSE has the responsibility to manage and deliver, or to arrange to be delivered on its behalf, health and personal social services. This includes the delivery of audiology services and the prioritising and resourcing of the development of national community audiology services is now a matter for the HSE. Nonetheless, I am happy to set out the position as regards this matter, as well as to convey the information provided by the HSE on the specific questions asked by the Deputies.

The national community audiology service provides free audiology services for all children, irrespective of their parents' means, and for adults who have eligibility. For an adult to be eligible, he or she must be in possession of a current medical card. The service held 4,822 clinics in 2006 and 39,432 patients were seen. A figure of €1,663,430 was spent nationally on hearing aids and accessories in 2006.

Until the end of last year, all hearing aids fitted by the national community audiology service were of the analogue type. However, since the beginning of 2007, the HSE, as part of the modernisation of the service, has started the roll-out of the provision of digital hearing aids for children up to the age of 18 years. The reason for this was the impact of hearing loss on children's education.

As Deputy Enright said, everyone would agree that if we are going to focus resources, they should be focused in this direction. At present, the HSE does not provide digital hearing aids for adults over the age of 18 years. However, it is examining the costs involved in providing digital hearing aids to adults. In addition, it hopes to establish a national review of audiology services to explore the delivery of such services in the most appropriate setting.

Meanwhile, the HSE has worked to ensure national standardisation of approaches to waiting lists and waiting times using a standardised template. Data according to this revised template is due to be reported at the end of the first quarter 2007.

A further imperative is to develop integrated working for those with hearing loss at primary care level between audiologists, general practitioners, speech and language therapists, public health nurses, etc. The HSE also envisages the development of audiology services that will be fully integrated between acute hospitals and community services and delivered in the most appropriate setting.

The Department of Health and Children is committed to the continued development of community audiology services. I will ensure that the comments of both Deputies are brought to the attention of the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney.

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