Frank Feighan (Sligo-Leitrim, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. In preparing for and responding to Covid-19 and to fully align with public health guidance as recommended by NPHET, the HSE and its partner service providers put in place a range of measures.

These included the prioritisation of vital residential and home support services, while curtailing or closing certain services, such as day services as well as certain clinical supports, in order to prioritise essential public health services at community healthcare organisation, CHO, level and ensure continued delivery of the referenced residential and home supports provision.

Effective redeployment of health service employees was a core element of the response by the HSE to Covid-19. Hospital groups and community healthcare organisations, temporarily redeployed staff to support their business continuity plans, to emerging services developing in direct response to Covid-19 and in response to the health and availability of staff in their own organisations.

Having said that, some services continued with therapists, including speech and language therapists, working with service users and their families remotely and using technology in new and effective ways.

The HSE's national HR strategic workforce planning and intelligence unit collects information regarding the redeployment of some staff. Many grades and categories of staff, including speech and language therapists, were redeployed and some continue to be redeployed to other services such as the helplines, contact tracing, testing, public health and service support.

The presence and threat of Covid-19 in Ireland is ongoing and has resulted in significant challenges for service users, their carers and families and for service providers. During these challenging times, disability services and supports, such as residential services, day services, home supports, personal assistant supports, respite services and children's services, were either suspended or delivered in alternative ways in line with public health guidance.

In the absence of regular scheduled day services, respite supports and multidisciplinary supports, CHOs and service providers have tried to maintain services that can be delivered safely, providing outreach and telecare solutions, using technology where possible and using creative and innovative models of care to support service users, both adults and children. The HSE was also mindful of the will and preference of people in terms of receiving services and in certain instances where personal choice was made to put these services on hold.

The HSE acknowledges that during the current Covid-19 pandemic situation, it has not been possible to maintain full services. It has, therefore, been difficult to complete clinical assessments or provide interventions while maintaining social distancing and meeting health and safety requirements.

The HSE is aware of the numbers of children and adults waiting for therapy services, as the Deputy outlined, including speech and language therapy, and is fully cognisant of the stress this can cause to families. One of the key priorities for the HSE is to improve waiting times for therapy services.

In respect of the provision of disability services and in the context of the Government's Resilience and Recovery 2020-2021 framework, the HSE regards the provision of disability services as essential to maintaining a response to people with a disability. This means that therapies including speech and language therapy, while being delivered in new ways, will gradually be re-introduced to children with disabilities. It is a priority for the HSE to release redeployed staff back to their substantive grade and a national recruitment campaign is under way to retain testing and tracing resources in order to deliver this priority. As the Deputy rightly stated, 50% of the staff redeployed at the beginning of the pandemic have already returned to their substantive grade.

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