Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

We have established new schools for speech and language therapy and occupational therapy in Dublin, Galway, Trinity College and Cork and a master's degree in physiotherapy is offered in Limerick. There has been a response in terms of improving the resource and ensuring we have sufficient people. The reason for the existence of this problem is that insufficient numbers of people were coming through the system. Part of our health service reform programme includes the question of achieving more flexible working arrangements whereby newly qualified speech and language therapists can take up tasks and not be required to be supervised by senior staff, which is currently part of the work practice in the public service.

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