Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

On Senator Corrigan's question about the therapists, there has been a delay in recruiting some of those therapists. I regret that is the case, particularly in terms of speech and language therapy which has major implications for disabled children. I have seen the difference between a child that has speech and language therapy and one that does not. Resources will be given to the HSE. Some industrial relations issues arose regarding the recruitment of many of these therapists at community level where IR agreements specified that they had to have three years' experience in the hospital before they could work in the community. That is a crazy situation that applies to physiotherapists also, and 40% of our physiotherapists who qualified last year remain unemployed. We are working with the HSE on those issues and I assure the Senator it is on the top of my list of priorities in terms of the disability sector in particular.

Senator Ó Domhnaill asked me about Altnagelvin, or rather the north west; he does not represent Altnagelvin yet.