Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)

We are doing a number of things in recruitment and retention. We have bursaries in place. We are opening up HSE panels. We have HSE advertising streams. We also have a number of fairs, including one in May where one of the top priorities was to recruit people and to introduce people to social care therapists, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. We have 150 extra therapists going through our third level institutions and there will be more again this year. We are looking at therapy assistants. We have therapists going into our special schools. We also have incentives for therapists to work in our CDNTs. We have more than €10 million in funding. Additional funding has been made available by the Government for children's services. This funding focuses on recruiting various positions in CDNTs, including 20 senior therapists, 20 staff grade posts, 20 health and social care assistant posts and 15 clinical training posts. Measures are also being taken to assist with sustainably addressing the backlog in the assessment of needs.

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