Micheál Carrigy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In recent months, the Joint Committee on Autism, of which I am Chairperson, has been meeting with parents' groups from all over the country. A theme that keeps coming up is the lack of therapy services. When we drill down into that issue, we find there are more than 800 posts that are fully funded by the Government across all therapy services, including speech and language, occupational therapy and psychology, but which are not filled because we do not have qualified people available to take up the jobs within the HSE. The reality is that children are suffering.

I will give an example. At the Phoenix Centre in my home county of Longford, there was a period during the summer when only 3.8 posts were filled across the services to cover a county with a population of more than 45,000 people. There was a half-post for a speech and language therapist to look after children and schools. More than 230,000 children were on a waiting list for assessment of needs and more than 700 were waiting for services. The future looks very bleak because we do not have the people coming through the system to take up these posts. As I said, the posts are fully funded by the Government, which is important to acknowledge.

There must be an increase in the number of positions in third level colleges to train people to fill the posts across the services. There are only 100 places on occupational therapy courses between all the colleges in the country. A certain percentage of graduates will go abroad and another percentage will go into private practice. That leaves a narrow group of people to work within the HSE. We must increase dramatically the number of places in colleges and put graduate programmes in place. Otherwise, children will continue to suffer by not getting the services they need and deserve.

If we want to give children in this country an equal opportunity in life, we must ensure they can access these services at a young age. I recently visited a national school in my area, St. Joseph's National School in Longford, where I met parents who are massively concerned about these services. We need to take serious action to address the problem. The HSE has neglected forward planning in this area.