Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the reply from the Minister of State. The difficulty is that she is correct, as her remit is about the education system and the Minister of State with responsibility for disability is in charge of another aspect of it. What is happening is this issue is being passed from Billy to Jack. We took Defence Force personnel away from contact tracing and we left speech and language therapists doing contact tracing over the past seven months. Take Liam for example. He turned five last month and had his first block of speech therapy sanctioned in March. He did not have any session before he started school in September. As Liam was not sanctioned a special needs assistant in a school, his older sister must translate for him. These issues have come across because speech therapists are doing contact tracing and no one has replaced them over the past seven months.

Will the Minister of State intervene and ensure the front-line therapists who could help Liam are doing the job they are trained for? Will the Minister of State ensure his older sister, Eva, can be a normal child in first class and not a special needs assistant for her brother?

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