Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise with the Taoiseach the appalling waiting times and waiting lists for children who wish to access therapy services such as speech and language therapy, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Children from the earliest age do not have access to such therapists. That is the reality of where we are today. For example, Deputies Cowen and Fleming highlighted recently that in counties Laois and Offaly, 400 families with an autistic child cannot access therapy services while 950 children are waiting for occupational therapy in County Laois where the average waiting time is 47 months. A child referred at five years of age, therefore, could be ten before he or she receives treatment. In north Mayo, there are 86 children waiting for therapy services with 60 being high priority. There have been 101 referrals for speech and language therapy but there is no full-time therapist. A number of Members met representatives of Scoil Cara in Cork earlier this week. Its enrolment has gone from approximately 20 children with autism to 60 children. There is no multi-dimensional therapy team in that school. With regard to occupational therapy assessment nationally, more than 5,690 are waiting on under 18 therapy services with in excess of 3,000 waiting for more than a year for such an assessment.

The situation is not acceptable and is not tenable. The existing HSE model of progressing disability services for children and younger model is a failed model and it is the wrong model in my considered view. I have put this forward for the past 12 months as did my party's education team.

In my view the schools should be employing the therapists on school campuses either in one school or in clusters of schools and there should be a holistic multidimensional teams working with teachers and psychologists on the school campus. We are light years away from that; in fact, the opposite is now happening where teams are being taken from the special schools as part of the HSE's reconfiguration of services.

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