Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State. I am all for public services and I welcome the fact the Minister of State is chasing down the maximum number of public services we can and increasing the number of consultants and clinicians we have in that area. Unfortunately, too many families are waiting too long for those much-needed services for speech and language, OT, physiotherapy or whatever their child might need. I know we spoke already about Cara Darmody and the €10 million fund that was created for private assessments of need, and I welcomed that at the time. It was discussed in this House.

In supporting any public development, the question around case-by-case basis emergencies remains. Does the Minister of State have any idea how many CDNTs have used that facility of using private services for case-by-case basis emergencies? The number of people coming to my office are probably not aware of that but they are definitely not using that particular emergency service.

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