Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Boyd Barrett has spoken about the fact we need early interventions. I raised a Topical Issue matter on this and spoke about Louth and Dundalk and the lack of occupational therapists, OTs, and speech and language therapists in the area. There are people who have been assessed and who are being told they will not get services for a year or two years. Obviously, that is not on. I am back to the same issue. It is a matter of ensuring we have the throughput of training and we remove all obstacles. Beyond that, we need to do a serious amount of workforce planning, because otherwise we will fail these people, children and families, and the impact long term will be devastating.

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