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

Clearly, many of the issues Deputy Naughten is raising are under the remit of the Minister for Health and probably the Minister of State with responsibility for disability as well. I accept what Deputy Naughten is saying. We cannot have delays that are in any way going to adversely affect a child obtaining speech and language services. That is a separate matter to the school setting, as I have said. I do not believe it is a case of being passed from Billy to Jack. These are separate environments and places. The therapy in the school setting is not in lieu of any services that should be provided to a child by the HSE.

A significant investment was made in the budget yesterday with €4 billion going into health. That amount is unprecedented and should help alleviate some of those issues. The special education budget alone has seen a 50% increase since 2011 and the allocation has gone from €1.2 billion to €2 billion. Deputy Naughten mentioned SNAs. There has been a 60% increase since 2011 and we now have 18,000 SNAs. We have made significant progress but obviously there is a great deal more that we need to do.

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