Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

Leslie is a 16 year old girl with Down's syndrome who lives in my constituency. She is cared for by her mother in the local authority house in which they live. Her mother is a lone parent in receipt of carer's allowance. Leslie attends special education at St. John of God's, Islandbridge, the work of which most if not all Members of this House hold in high regard. Although 16 years old, Leslie has never had access to speech therapy except for a period of six weeks in a group context. Leslie badly needs appropriate access to speech and language therapy. Her mother came to see me at her wit's end in October 2006. Leslie could not get access to the limited speech therapy available at St. John of God's. As she is in special education, she does not have access to speech therapy where it is provided by community services.

Since October 2006 my office and I have been pressing for at least some effort to be made to meet Leslie's pressing needs. We have been round and round the mulberry bush but have been ignored or referred from Billy to Jack. Meaningless replies or no replies at all are the norm. For example, in reply to a parliamentary question I put on 12 February 2008 I was told by the Minister for Health and Children, along with the usual macro statistics:

The Deputy's question relates to the management and delivery of health and personal social services, which are the responsibility of the Health Service Executive under the Health Act 2004. Accordingly, my Department has requested the parliamentary affairs division of the executive to arrange to have these matters investigated and to have a reply issued directly to the Deputy.

That was on 12 February and today is 10 April, but I have not even received a reply from the HSE. I can see no reason for optimism given the tenor of my exchanges directly with the HSE. Usually replies are evasive and deliberately avoid the actual problem. In direct correspondence painfully extracted over a long period, I was told that St. John of God's has a speech and language therapy post attached to its service, so Leslie should access speech and language therapy there. The reply ignored the basic fact that the speech and language therapy post is either vacant for long periods or access to it is denied to Leslie because of pressure to give priority to the under five year olds. I have pointed this out in writing to the HSE but it simply refused to reply. This is typical of the evasive, insensitive, time wasting bureaucratic speak of the public agencies on which Leslie is entitled to rely. The local authority responded in a similarly insensitive manner to an earnest request to facilitate a local housing transfer on foot of anti-social behaviour. South Dublin County Council refused to transfer Leslie and her mother to a vacant house in a safe cul de sac. If Leslie's mother works for more than 15 hours, she will lose part or all of her carer's allowance.

The reality of Celtic tiger Ireland is that Leslie and her mother are besieged by anti-social behaviour in their home, her mother is unable to go out to work because she would lose her benefit and Leslie is unable to access the intensive speech and language therapy that she so desperately needs. Worst of all is that it is not possible to find someone who gives a damn. The Minister will pass the buck to the HSE, the HSE will go to the word processor that churns out a routine reply for this kind of case and the county council refuses a housing transfer by taking shelter behind the opinion of a medical officer who is accountable to no one.

What medical qualifications does one need not to recognise that a young woman of 16 with Down's syndrome may need a safer environment? What kind of manpower planning has left Islandbridge without speech therapists for long periods and inadequate access at the best of times? I ask the Minister to take responsibility for the vindication of the rights of this child. She is entitled to have access to the intensive speech therapy she has been denied until now. It is shameful this should be the case. In Celtic tiger Ireland, unless a parent can afford private access, a child with an intellectual disability continues to suffer.

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