Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Bill amends the Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005 to provide that any non-Irish health professional qualification that was recognised in the State prior to the introduction of the statutory registration at the Health and Social Care Professionals Council, CORU, will not have to be re-recognised for the purposes of registration under the Act. It pertains to a wide range of health and social care professions. The 15 professions recognised under the Act are clinical biochemists, counsellors and psychotherapists, dieticians, dispensing opticians, medical scientists, occupational therapists, optometrists, orthopists, physiotherapists, podiatrists, psychologists, radiographers, radiation therapists, social workers and speech and language therapists. It is a valuable and important group of people for our medical and social care systems.

The Bill provides a new route for non-Irish qualifications to be recognised and for the practitioners to be allowed, therefore, to use their professional titles. If the foreign qualifications were recognised by the Minister or bodies acting on behalf of the State prior to the creation of the new statutory registration regime, they will still be recognised without reassessment being required by CORU. As such, those practitioners will be allowed use their professional titles.

The Health and Social Care Professionals Act 2005 was important legislation because it provided for quality control, registration and protection for the public in the context of this wide range of services. Until that point, only doctors, dentists, nurses, opticians and pharmacists were subject to the statutory registration. That was greatly expanded in 2005 and supported by the establishment of CORU, which also promotes standards of professional conduct, education, training, competence and more and, therefore, is an important body doing important work.

Fianna Fáil considers the amendment to the Act to be sensible and we will support the Bill in its passage. While the Bill is largely technical in nature, as the Minister of State noted, new routes to professional recognition once deemed safe and appropriate are to be welcomed because we are running out of, or are desperately short of, many of the professionals referenced in the Bill.

The Bill covers radiographers. A colleague of mine was contacted in his constituency in Kildare by general practitioners, GPs, who said they no longer had direct access to DEXA scanning. It is an important bone-density scan for which GPs are able to make direct referral in many, although not all, hospitals. We submitted a parliamentary question on the issue and I received a letter in return from the HSE through Naas General Hospital. The letter acknowledged receipt of my letter and said the DEXA service to GPs is suspended due to a national shortage of radiographers. It went on to say the hospital is making every effort to fill the current vacancies. Hospitals and radiographers, as well as the consultants, doctors and nurses who work with those radiographers, will say the same thing, namely, that they cannot hire the staff.

One of the things we need to do is open the diagnostic suites more because there is a massive backlog of people waiting for diagnostics. We have the machines, and in some other countries the diagnostic suites are open 24-7, or from 6 a.m. until 12 midnight six days a week. Typically, we do not that do that, and our hospitals are open from approximately 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday, although it varies somewhat. When one talks to the hospital managers and asks them why they are not doing more diagnostics, they do not say they do not have the machines or that they cannot bring patients into the hospital. When one talks to patients who say they have been waiting months for what could be very important scans, and when one asks if they would mind presenting at the hospital on a Saturday or Sunday, or at 7 a.m. or 9 p.m., they will reply of course they would not mind as they need the scan. All the hospitals, nurses and doctors will tell one they cannot hire the radiographers, which is a serious matter.

On children with special needs, the reference to occupational therapists and speech and language therapists is worth reflecting on. I looked at the waiting lists in preparation for this session. Although men and women are also waiting for speech and language therapy, a significant number of those waiting are children.

There are many adults as well with an acquired brain injury, stroke and all sorts of conditions. Many of the people awaiting speech and language therapy in the Minister of State's constituency and mine are children. The number of patients, men women and children, in the country waiting for initial assessment from a speech and language therapist is 14,501. In the Kildare-Wicklow area there are more than 800.

Occupational therapy and occupational therapists, OTs, are used for the rehabilitation of a wide range of chronic conditions and all sorts of other conditions. Many of the people who use them have spinal injuries. Many children, including children with special needs, are waiting for occupational therapy. I took a look at these figures as well. The total number of people in Ireland right now waiting for an initial assessment from an occupational therapist is 32,102. In the Kildare-Wicklow area again, it is in excess of 2,800 people.

On the issue of physiotherapists, there is a chronic shortage of rehabilitation facilities. The National Rehabilitation Hospital does its very best. It is a phenomenal place with phenomenal people but they are screaming out for more beds and proper step-down facilities. I was very involved with one case involving a very unfortunate event that happened where a fit, healthy young man working out in a gym on the west coast had an accident in the gym. When he woke up on the floor of the gym, his spine was fractured and he was quadriplegic. Unless medicine evolves very quickly, that is the prognosis. He received fantastic care in the National Rehabilitation Hospital. From memory, he was discharged in September of last year with other people with serious injuries very much in need of his bed. In fairness, the HSE, after taking a long time to get going, finally did row in behind us and we managed to get Andrew O'Malley his bed around May. He was sitting in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, taking up a bed that somebody else needed, and was unable to go to a step-down facility.

When one talks to those in charge of disability services, those in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, or those running the step-down facilities, they will say that they do not have enough physiotherapists. This Bill is relevant because it is a small step in making it easier for qualified physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and a wide range of very important people in our system by removing one barrier to them being able to do their job. The chronic shortage of these professionals, be they speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, radiographers or physiotherapists - the list goes on and on - is causing untold pain and suffering. In many cases it is depriving people, especially children with special needs where there has to be as much early intervention as possible and it is taking three and a half years for them even to begin treatment, of leading the best future life that they can live. It is not exactly what the Bill is about, but it is about these professionals in our country. We need to do a hell of a lot more to keep them, reward them, and understand how to make their jobs better and more rewarding and make sure that they have the staffing ratios, pay and conditions, professional learning environments and training they need so that we can keep the fantastic professionals we train and so that we can become a place of choice of employment for these professionals from all over the world.

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