Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for her reply and I welcome it. The community needs complete certainty as to when exactly this post will be filled because there has been a lack of faith here because the post has been vacant, as I have outlined, for more than three years. It is very clear that the HSE's pay and numbers strategy is not working. Officials in the HSE have told me that they were severely impacted by the moratorium before it was lifted and now, because of the pay and numbers strategy, they are simply unable to fill the vacant posts they have, whether that is due to maternity leave, resignations, etc. We know that with the pay and numbers strategy, that posts are essentially disappearing as if into thin air and that clinical staff are being poached by the private sector. I know of a local speech and language therapist who went to Australia on a career break and could not resume her post when she returned due to the pay and numbers strategy.

Last year, the HSE facilitated a group of parents in this school. One parent from Thomondgate, just across the river from King's Island, spoke in glowing terms about the relationship she and her kids had with the speech and language therapist in Ballynanty Health Centre a kilometre away. All of her children had been seen by the same speech and language therapist for over a decade and have now been discharged. A parent who lives in King's Island, across the river, as I outlined, said that her children had yet to see the speech and language therapist, not to mind develop a meaningful relationship with one. We need to see a change here with regard to the pay and numbers strategy to ensure that this type of situation does not occur again.

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