Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach referred to speech and language therapy. I was not going to make this point but there is a chronic crisis in speech and language therapy and the availability of such services for young children, even to get diagnosed and so on.

On social policy and public services, does the Taoiseach accept that a huge percentage, I would go as far as to say 10% to 15%, of society does not engage with services and that there are disadvantaged communities right across the State, not only in the large urban centres but also in rural areas, which have not contributed to, or engaged in, their communities for generations and that they have become more and more isolated as the generations have passed? Would the Taoiseach accept that this is one of the major challenges facing society? In the past 50 years, free education has delivered enormously for society. The next major challenge is around how to bring people who are at the periphery of society, and those who are most disadvantaged, back into society. It is through education that it will happen but there is no sense of a coherent strategy at Government level in the Departments of Health, Justice and Equality and Education and Skills to see if we can tackle the social isolation felt and experienced by young people and older people from various strands of society. Perhaps I will come back to that in a subsequent question.

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