Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I raise this matter because of the appalling treatment received by a little five-year-old boy in my constituency, who is in urgent need of speech and language therapy. Speech and language therapy is like life blood to persons who are speech or language impaired since verbal communication is the essence of modern life. This therapy is as essential to a speech or language-impaired person as a wheelchair is to someone who is mobility-impaired. Effective verbal communication will enable a person to make a positive contribution to society and live a normal life. This child was placed on a waiting list for assessment, which transpired to be over a period of 12 months. After waiting for 12 months, the child was assessed and was rated as being in "critical" need of services. From this assessment, one would imagine that the child would be placed at or near the top of a priority list for treatment. The parents have been informed that the child faces a minimum further 12 months on a waiting list before he can have access to speech and language therapy.

What a sad and shameful commentary on the level of speech and language therapy services available in this country eight years into the 21st century. This matter got some national coverage and, since I raised it, a number of parents around the country have been in touch with me. Nothing has changed since I first raised this issue in the Dáil a quarter of a century ago in a similar case when I described speech and language therapy services then as "dire" and "in the Dark Ages".

Back then, just 25 speech and language therapists were graduating annually from the College of Speech and Language Therapy — barely enough to cover retirements. The number of speech and language therapists in the country then was around 85, less than a quarter of the minimum optimum figure recommended by the Quirk report 10 years earlier in 1975, 33 years ago.

Let us fast-forward to 2002, when the Bacon report recommended that the annual output of 25 be increased fourfold to 100 in an attempt to make some impact on the waiting lists. To his credit, the then Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Micheál Martin, committed to increasing the annual number of graduates to 100, as Bacon had recommended. One would think this was signalling a new era for all those persons who had spent years in some cases on waiting lists for this vital service. Unfortunately, when the first graduates came on stream and were available for appointment, they were turned down due to lack of experience. How were they expected to gain the necessary experience except by being initially appointed to posts which had not been created? The problem was that we trained people but did not create the posts. The policy was so pig-headed and illogical that one wonders how people can seriously cook up such facile impediments to the provision of an essential service to persons in grave need of treatment.

The earliest possible intervention for children with speech and language disorders is crucial, since it can preclude the need for infinitely more costly intervention at a later stage, perhaps when the persons are in their teens or older.

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