Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Tully, for all the work she has put into this issue in her ongoing work with parents. It is important and she has proved to be an important voice for children with disabilities and for their parents, and I thank her for that. I do not doubt that the Minister of State wants to do something about this situation. She knows about the waiting lists and about the parents, because if they are contacting me and my colleagues about these issues, they are also contacting the Minister of State. I am also aware that she knows each and every case. When parents look at their children and see that something is not quite right, perhaps because they are not behaving in the way their siblings might, they know something is wrong. That is where the battle starts. The parents battle and battle.

I listened to the Minister of State's colleague who said that she wants suggestions and some solutions. We need a new autism strategy and we need it urgently. We also need a workforce planning strategy. The Minister of State knows places do not exist to train speech and language therapists, psychologists and all the other disciplines we require across the board. We need proper integration between third level institutions and the HSE, but it is not happening.

The Minister of State knows the craziness in this regard. Let us take the example of a speech and language therapist who gets the wonderful news that she is pregnant and is going to go on maternity leave. When do we recruit for that position? We start the recruitment process when that speech and language therapist leaves her post and not on the day it was announced. It is the same situation when people hand in their notice. Riddle me that situation.

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