Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I thank Senator O’Reilly for raising this matter and for the opportunity to discuss this very important issue for Cavan but for people more generally.

As we know, at a higher level, primary care therapy services generally, such as speech and language therapy, play an absolutely central role in enhancing the health and well-being of both children and adults in the community. However, the Senator and I are both aware and have discussed separately the very important early intervention measures that speech and language therapy can provide.

I am doing everything I can, working with the Minister, Deputy Lawless, to get more speech and language therapists with regard to the number of training places. In the past number of days I have met with officials from CORU about the speed of registrations and how we might do that better to get more people onto the register to be able to serve our community.I met with the national clinical directorate for disability yesterday on the same point about making sure that as many speech and language therapists, and indeed therapists more broadly, are available in our system to be able to provide services to everybody who needs them but, in particular, as the Senator correctly identified, and as the Sláintecare principle goes, as close to home as possible.

We are not there yet, however, and we have to organise services in a way that maximises our ability to get the most out of the good training and the good experience of every therapist. I am aware that recent increases in the number of referrals as well as an increase in the complexity of presentations require many more intensive interventions that have put more pressure on many primary care services, including speech and language therapies. Furthermore, a number of primary care services face staff shortages and we have ongoing recruitment challenges. Combined, these factors have increased the waiting lists for services across the country. I fully recognise the frustration of people in Cavan who have to address both long waiting lists and the geographical proximity of the services available to them. I want to make sure they have timely access to therapeutic services.

On do-not-attends, it is very important that people attend their appointments because every appointment that is not fulfilled costs somebody else the opportunity. We have to take a strong approach to do-not-attends generally in order that we can continue to get the best for our all-too-scarce-yet services, particularly in disability.

I am committed to building capacity in primary care, recruiting additional staff and promoting advanced practice roles in the community for health and social care professionals. The Government is committed to increasing the number of college training places for health and social care professionals. Cavan community healthcare network speech and language therapy services, as I understand, are currently delivered in Cootehill; Breffni Care Centre, Ballyconnell; and Cavan town in line with the current staffing resource that is available. That is our big challenge: making sure we have enough therapists to be able to deliver the service to the people who need it as close to home as possible. We are not there yet, and I appreciate the Senator raising the complexity of this intersection for the people in his area. I hear him very clearly in that regard. All I can do is try to increase the number of therapists insofar as possible, expedite recruitment where we can and make sure that the therapists and the services are delivered as close to home as possible.

In the meantime, until we reach that, we have to do this as efficiently as possible to get the best for every therapist and every therapeutic service and to make sure they are seeing as many people as possible, recognising the increased number of presentations and the increased complexity of those presentations. I hear the Senator very clearly about the needs of the people of Cavan.