Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue relating to recruitment generally, as well as for health and social care professionals and therapists and, as the Deputy rightly stated, in the area of children's disability services. I acknowledge that recruitment is very challenging at present, particularly as we are dealing with the effects of the global pandemic. However, it is worth nothing that recruitment in the past two years has been the highest in the history of the HSE. There is a lot more that needs to be done. Hundreds of posts have been sanctioned in disability services and those posts need to be filled. The quickest and most effective way to make sure that every child gets the assessment and treatment he or she needs is to hire those therapists. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, is working every day to fix this problem. We have sanctioned hundreds of posts around the country that are not yet filled. As they get filled, there will be a substantial increase in the number of therapists available and that will make a big difference. Ultimately, we have to get these waiting lists down to zero. No child should be waiting for an assessment or therapies.

More broadly, the workforce has grown by nearly 15,000 whole-time equivalents since 2019. It is continuing to grow at an unprecedented rate and is on track to grow by approximately 5,500 whole-time equivalents this year, which would be an increase of approximately 4% in just one year. To put it in context, the workforce grew by approximately 2,400 whole-time equivalents since the end of 2021.

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