Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

I congratulate the Minister of State on his appointment and wish him well. I thank him for the frankness of his comments and for cutting through the script to speak frankly.

The proposal to remove the disability allowance from young people of 16 to 18 years and replace it with the domiciliary care allowance is a retrograde step and is bad news for families with someone with a disability. Those families stand to lose €6,000 per annum or €12,000 over two years. It is proposed that they seek the domiciliary care allowance, which would allow them €300 per month. The Minister of State indicated this may be revisited. I hope that is the case and I would welcome that. Anything else is highly discriminatory and should not have been included in the budget.

I have consistently made the point in the Seanad, on the Order of Business and on other occasions, that we should never seek to rectify the grave fiscal errors of the past 11 years on the backs of the weak and vulnerable, such as disabled people. I received a briefing from an association called Special Needs Active Parents, SNAP, set up in 2004, which is active in the north-eastern area of the country, including Cavan, Monaghan, Louth and Meath. The briefing refers to the shortage in that area of therapy.

I would be pleased if the Minister of State would investigate the veracity of this example, which I believe will stand up. In St. Brigid's special school in Ard Easmuinn, Dundalk, no speech therapy has been available since June 2005. A seven year old boy with special needs has not received speech therapy in that time. There is a shortage of speech therapists, psychologists and occupational therapists. Children who have turned six years of age and are due to be transferred from the early intervention team to the children's team have been placed on waiting lists due to the lack of therapists available. The Department of Health and Children and the HSE need to set up a long-term strategy to train and retain the required number of therapists. According to a spokesperson for the Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists on "Morning Ireland" on 3 March 2007, the first batch of speech therapists from three new university courses were due to graduate this summer. The association estimates that half of them will emigrate as there are no jobs available. That is at variance with the figures presented by the Minister of State of the availability of speech therapy. I welcome one suggestion by the Minister of State where he——