Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)

I do not have the figures for that but I can tell the Deputy that the focus of Government, and my focus and that of the Minister, Deputy Foley, is to make sure we are increasing the number of speech and language therapists and occupational therapists so that they are actually going out there providing the therapies. As the Deputy knows with regard to the backlog of assessment of need, a lot of them are carrying out the assessments. What many people want and what parents send their children to get these assessments for is to get access to the therapies, which is a huge part of this. That is the drive we are working on through the legislation around the assessment of need process to make it more efficient and effective, and to meet the needs of our children who really need these services. That is our sole focus. Yes, we provided €10 million to try to address the assessment of need backlog, for example, and we will continue to work our way through that. People do have a right to an assessment of need but we need to make sure that we are looking at our third level institutions, recruitment abroad and speeding up the registration process for those coming back from abroad through CORU but also looking at bursaries. If the Deputy has other suggestions, my door is open with regard to recruitment and retention of these therapists.

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