Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has raised two questions today, neither of which were in regard to the questions he tabled. Speech and language therapy provided by the HSE is slightly outside of my remit but nevertheless within the school inclusion model we have put in place a pilot project in 150 schools and we now have received investment to roll that out in 200 schools. We will be using speech and language therapists in respect of whom recruitment is under way. We will also be using occupational therapists and crisis and behaviour specialists as well. This will revolutionise the school setting for children with special needs.

On the recruitment of therapists, owing to the Covid pandemic many therapists were redeployed to the HSE. I reassured the Deputy earlier that from my perspective within a school environment the NCSE is allowed to recruit these therapists directly without having to rely on the HSE therapists who are I understand being taken up with contact tracing. I will raise the issue with the Minister of State with responsibility for disability and the Minister for Health. I am not privy to the minutiae of whether these therapists are still being retained in contact tracing within the HSE or whether the majority of them have returned to their work. I can understand why they were redeployed in the first instance but obviously we do not want it to be to the detriment of children with special needs who need these services.

Within the school setting, which is my remit, I can reassure the Deputy that the school inclusion model, for which we have received funding for over 80 therapists in yesterday's budget, will be expanded to other community health organisation areas, on top of the already selected community health organisation areas. We hope next year to cover another three and perhaps another three the following year, which would be nine in total. That is the ambition. It would be groundbreaking for children with special needs in the school environment and it is something I am determined to do.

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