James Bannon (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State will understand the importance of having a child's development assessed before he or she enters primary school in order for the school to cater properly and professionally for the child's needs. She will also be aware of the procedure of the early intervention team and its vital role in ensuring a child is properly assessed. An early intervention team consists of a public health nurse, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, a social worker, a dietician and a child psychologist. For a child to be assessed, he or she must meet each of those individuals who will compile their own reports and they will be used as the basis to determine what supports the child may need in primary school. The supports can range from the provision of a special needs assistant, SNA, to helping a child progress with his or her speech development. It usually takes about six months for the report to be progressed through the HSE and the requirements are put in place before the child starts school.

However in Longford, the child psychologist is currently on maternity leave and has not been temporarily replaced. That essentially means the psychological report cannot be produced and therefore the final report to the HSE cannot be completed. As a result, we have a number of children in County Longford whose assessment is essentially at a standstill because the HSE has failed to provide cover while the child psychologist is on leave. That presents a number of serious problems. If parents wish to take the private route, they can pay to have their child privately assessed. However, the HSE will not accept a report from the private sector. There are strict instructions that the report must be compiled by a HSE-employed child psychologist. Therefore, even if a parent is willing to pay €300 to have a private report conducted, it will still not suffice. In that case, all the parents can do is provide the report to the school, which will know exactly what the child requires but it is unable to apply for HSE-assisted funding because the report was not conducted by a HSE psychologist.

Another problem is that when the child psychologist returns from leave, he or she will have a serious backlog of children that must be assessed and that will take a number of months. Many of the children will already have been waiting a substantial period. I wish to stress that this is in no way the fault of the early intervention team. Any one member of the team may have to go on maternity leave, sick leave or compassionate leave. The problem is simply due to a lack of arrangements on the part of the HSE to employ a temporary replacement while the current team member is on leave. Therefore, we have a number of children in Longford who are essentially in limbo.

By the time they enter primary school in September 2016, their needs will not have been catered for properly and I plead with the Minister of State to intervene to cater for them.

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