Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this Second Stage debate on the Health and Social Care Professionals (Amendment) Bill 2012, which is technical legislation to update and amend the 2005 Act. Like other speakers, I would welcome an explanation from the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, as to the reason only two of the proposed 12 registration boards have been established. The Health and Social Care Professionals Bill was enacted in 2005, a time of plenty. It is difficult to understand the reason it has not been implemented to any great extent. It appears little or no priority was given to implementation of the provisions of the 2005 Act.

This Bill, which is basically technical legislation and has the universal support of this House, provides that the Minister may nominate persons to fill vacancies on the registration boards and seeks to ensure the mutual recognition of qualifications between member states is updated. I would welcome urgent implementation of this Bill into the future. I support the suggestions regarding the inclusion of additional professions in the Bill and that we take this opportunity to do that. I believe the professions of counselling and psychotherapy should also be regulated under this Bill. I recently looked into the area of counselling and psychotherapy on behalf of a constituent. There is a huge plethora of people using the title "counsellor" or "psychotherapist", the vast majority of whom I am sure are well qualified to do so. However, this area needs to be regulated in order to ensure protection of the public and persons utilising these services.

Including these professions in the Bill's provisions on registration would also protect the professionals. As it stands, anyone can set up as a counsellor or a psychotherapist. This is an especially sensitive area and we should give priority to such registration because many of those who attend these professionals are in difficult situations and have serious mental health issues. I support the calls made by other Deputies to include these two professions.

We should take this opportunity to commend the various health professionals on the work they do. Exceptionally professional work is done by people throughout the country and a very good one-to-one service is provided by health professionals in very difficult circumstances. We should refer to these difficult circumstances and the Minister should examine the manner in which many of these professional services are funded and resourced at present. I understand and accept that some of these professions are exempt from the moratorium but others are not and swathes of the country do not have certain professional services, such as the lack of a community dietetic service in the Tallaght area. Community occupational therapy and physiotherapy services are seriously depleted. This means additional costs are incurred because more expensive services must be used to deal with patients who could have been cared for at home, which is what they and their families would have preferred, but who are forced to attend general hospitals or private nursing homes. These are very costly compared with the community services which should be provided.

With regard to occupational therapy and the provision of equipment, only those who are fully immobile qualify for motorised wheelchairs or scooter surfaces. This means an individual who is 50% or significantly immobile but not fully immobile becomes housebound, which brings its own difficulties and ensures such a person must use general hospital or private nursing home services at huge additional cost to the health service and the taxpayer.

I am sure the provision of speech and language therapy services is a matter raised regularly with Deputies by parents encountering significant delays in having their young children seen. The earlier that speech and language difficulties are dealt with, the better the outcome. These parents also state the lengthy waiting list for these services undermines various other services and creates other difficulties for young children.

Even in professions not affected by the moratorium, cover is not provided for sick, annual or maternity leave. This creates significant difficulties in the health service, particularly in community care services which, we all agree, should be fully supported because they are very effective and, if at all possible, people want to be looked after in the community. However, many services such as occupational therapy, physiotherapy and dietetic services are not available or have significantly reduced availability. This means those who require the services must use higher cost services in nursing homes or hospitals. I call on the Minister to examine this area and ensure leave, especially maternity leave, is covered. Maternity leave is long and the Minister should ensure replacements are made available. It would be cost effective and good policy.

I welcome the Bill and the opportunity to speak on it.

See this speech in context