Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I remember the day Deputy Cairns raised the issue and I remember that the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, was here at the time. On the issues in Cork-Kerry, my understanding was that there were recruitment challenges for funded posts. Let me refresh my memory on that and come back to the Deputy directly. The Deputy is correct that there is a nationwide challenge with access to therapy services that goes beyond any particular geographic challenges. I do not dispute that at all. We are taking a number of steps to try to get on top of this. One is the establishment of a national education therapy service, led by the Minister, Deputy McEntee. This will apply to parents who have a child in a special school, in the first instance, and then spread out to special classes and mainstream school over time. Therapy services will be provided in the schools. This will start with speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. We are also looking at how we can use private capacity for assessments of need. We have seen a very significant increase in the number of people accessing assessments of need this year compared with last year. We are also increasing the number of college places, with the Minister, Deputy Lawless, to train more people. I accept that this is a very challenging area but we are taking a number of measures to try to get to a better place on it.

See this speech in context