Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Let me be very clear. The wording here is "Notwithstanding those challenges, staffing numbers across the four CDNTs now sits at 70.3 whole-time equivalents". It is not a percentage but whole-time equivalents.

Are we training enough staff? In the past 12 months, I have set up a workforce planning group that I chair. All the lead agencies are part of it, along with the Department of higher education and the leads within the HSE, so that we can have that around-the-table conversation. Are we training enough? Are we ensuring we have people in the different disciplines to meet the needs? It cannot always be OTs, physiotherapists and speech language therapists. We need dieticians, psychologists and assistant therapists. In the Deputy's county, the ETBs are fantastic at training the assistant therapists. If we are training assistant therapists, OTs and physiotherapists, we need to ensure they actually have work placement opportunities. The HSE is quite shy in providing those workplace opportunities within the teams. If they were able to avail of that, we would be able to bring on more staff quickly to support the children who need it.

See this speech in context