Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would also like to endorse the campaign for people to shop green this weekend, and I am going to be parochial and ask those in my own county of Longford and those in Westmeath to shop in businesses in their counties to help with employment.

I wish to raise the issue of services for those seeking early intervention. I know that it is an issue that has been raised on numerous occasions, but figures recently released by the HSE reveal long waiting lists for assessments for speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and physiotherapy, where early intervention is key to a child's prognosis. The endless HSE waiting lists are forcing some families to seek private medical care. According to figures from September 2020, there are currently 21,286 children under the age of 17 waiting for their first occupational therapy assessment, which is shocking. While we understand that many services have been put on hold due to Covid-19, we have been told by the Minister of the great work that has been done in recruitment but we have not seen this on the ground. Occupational therapists and speech and language therapists who are supposed to be treating those children have spent the past seven months doing contact tracing for the HSE. I call on the Minister to tell us when those staff will be back on the front line, treating children and not making phone calls. As far as I can see, until this is done, the situation, which is already serious, is at risk of getting out of control. What families need are expedited appointment dates and not excuses about Covid staff levels, etc.

I recently met with HSE officials and I was told that in the CHO 8 area, 12 people were recruited to relieve staff and to enable them to go back to providing front line services, however the staff have not gone back to their front line roles because the 12 people recruited were employed to cover the extra staff needed in testing.

I recently met with families in my home county of Longford who have spoken of their difficulty in accessing basic services for their children. These are real families and real people. We are in danger of becoming desensitised to the numbers on the waiting list, which are now in the thousands. Each number on the waiting list represents a child and a family who are desperately seeking intervention.

There has been a 45% drop in the recruitment of graduate occupational therapists, OTs, since 2016. That figure is part of statistics published by the HSE's health business services division, which shows that just 73 OTs were recruited by the HSE in 2019, down from 135 in 2016. This problem is only going to get worse.