Brian O'Shea (Waterford, Labour)
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Question 250: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children her proposals to ensure an adequate supply of speech and language therapists; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40417/05]

Brian O'Shea (Waterford, Labour)
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Question 295: To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children her proposals to make careers in speech and language therapy in the public health sector more attractive to therapists; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [40416/05]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 250 and 295 together.

The Deputy's questions relate to the management and delivery of health and personal social services, which are the responsibility of the Health Service Executive under the Health Act 2004. Accordingly, my Department has requested the parliamentary affairs division of the executive to arrange to have this matter investigated and have a reply issued directly to the Deputy.

The Deputy may wish to note that there have been a number of career developments in recent years to attract speech and language therapists to the public health services. These include the implementation of recommendations made by the expert group on various health professions which included new pay scales and enhanced career structures. In general, developments such as pay increases, improvements in career structure and enhanced opportunities for professional and career development have all supported increased staffing levels for key health and social care professions, including speech and language therapists. The implementation of the pay recommendations of the public service benchmarking body made a further important contribution to recruitment and improved retention. The continued implementation of the action plan for people management — a key action under the health strategy — has a crucial role in improving retention and reducing turnover of skilled staff.

As the Deputy may be aware, intensive efforts have been undertaken to improve staffing levels in speech and language therapy in the public health service. The success of these measures has contributed to an increase of 162 speech and language therapists or 42% over the number employed at the end of December 2000 and reflects significant increases in the numbers employed in promotional grades. There were 548 whole-time equivalent speech and language therapists employed in the public health service at the end of September 2005.

In addition, three new speech and language therapy courses commenced in the 2003-04 academic year in University College Cork, the National University of Ireland Galway and the University of Limerick. In total, these courses provide an additional 75 training places in speech and language therapy. This expansion in training numbers was identified in the Bacon report as sufficient to meet the long-term demand-supply balance for speech and language therapists. The first graduates from the two year masters course in the University of Limerick completed their studies in June 2005. The first graduates from the BSc courses in UCC and NUIG will graduate in 2007.

Essential to the successful roll-out of these additional training places is the provision of sufficient quality clinical placements in speech and language therapy. The funding I have provided this year along with that allocated in the past two years will enable the Health Service Executive, working with my Department, to put in place the enhanced structures necessary to ensure students will have access to a sustainable, high quality clinical training model.