Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----is a significant cause for concern. There is some encouragement. We ran a recruitment campaign that concluded a little while ago. At the end of May, 160 offers were made to successful candidates. I am going from memory here, rather than my note, but I think approximately 53 job offers from the figure of 160 have now been made and processed. There is another recruitment campaign about to be run as well. They are also looking at new, innovative ideas around therapy assistants and new grades in that space. This worked in other areas, such as psychology, in the past. They are looking at areas such as student sponsorship programmes as well. I met Bernard Gloster, the head of the HSE, on this only approximately a week ago. I am sure there are other issues to which the Deputy can point regarding funding challenges, but on this issue, we actually have more funding allocated than posts we can currently fill. We need to work intensively in that regard, and we are doing so.

Second, we need to increase the number of people we are training in these spaces. I thank my colleagues, the Minister, Deputy O’Donovan, the Minister for Health and the Minister for Education for the work that is being done to very significantly increase the number of training places in Irish universities from September. This does not fix every issue, but it should provide us with a pipeline of graduates coming out of Irish universities in key therapies such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and others. I am pleased that that will kick off from September.

See this speech in context