Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Now we are talking about something I can definitely help with. "Yes" is the short answer. This year we announced 1,056 additional places in college from September. We did not do what we had done in previous years, which was to announce a large global number. We have tried to target them in areas where there is a critical skills need, particularly a public service skills need. There are more nursing places this year, well over 100, and more medicine places. The single biggest increase ever, and certainly in a very long time, is that there are more therapy places, though not as many as I would like.

The next thing is to definitely do this workforce planning exercise in order that when we increase the size of higher education overall next year, we will look to target the areas where there are skills needs. The Deputy has identified a number of these.

There is another important area in respect of which we can provide help, namely, further education and training. If one looks at speech and language therapy, which is a very important discipline and profession; there is also a role of speech and language therapy assistant, for which we can provide through further education and training. The more we can expand the system in general for some children and for some adults, the better. Speech and language therapy assistants be able to play a very helpful role in that regard. They would certainly be able to support speech and language therapists. That is definitely an area I would be eager to explore, because there is action we can take quite quickly in respect of it.

See this speech in context