Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 280: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the steps that have been taken by her Department to replace a speech and language therapist providing services at a school (details supplied) in County Offaly; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39605/08]

Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)
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Question 281: To ask the Minister for Health and Children when a replacement speech and language therapist will be put in place for a school (details supplied) in County Offaly; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39606/08]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 280 and 281 together.

Almost 130,000 people work full-time or part-time in our public health services. In recent years, the Government's ongoing high level of investment in health has achieved and maintained significant increases in the numbers of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals employed in the public health services. The Government has also invested heavily in the education and training of such personnel in order to secure a good supply of graduates to provide for the healthcare needs of the population into the future.

In view of this significant investment, the Government is committed to ensuring continued adequate recruitment of professional staff across a range of community settings to ensure the continued development of community services. Additional funding of €20 million has been provided in 2009 for health and education services for children with special educational needs. This funding will provide a total of 125 additional therapy posts in the HSE targeted at children of school-going age. 90 of these will be in the disability services, including speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and physiotherapists. 35 additional posts will be provided for child and adolescent mental health services, including clinical psychologists, occupational therapists, and speech and language therapists for new and existing multi-disciplinary teams.

In addition, certain key health and social care professional posts, including speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, clinical psychologists, counsellors and social workers, are to be protected by setting employment floors for these grades within the Health Service Executive (HSE) in 2009. These posts are essential to the development of a number of services areas such as disability (including speech and language therapy), child adolescent mental health services and child protection services. In order to protect these posts, my Department will be writing to the HSE setting out the minimum employment levels to be maintained within each of these occupations in the health sector in 2009. The recruitment and retention of these key front line professional posts is vital to ensure continued progress in the development of community settings.

Subject to overall parameters set by Government, the Health Service Executive has the responsibility for determining the composition of its staffing complement. In that regard, it is a matter for the Executive to manage and deploy its human resources to best meet the requirements of its Annual Service Plan for the delivery of health and personal social services to the public. The Executive is the appropriate body to consider the matters raised by the Deputy. My Department has requested the Parliamentary Affairs Division of the Executive to arrange to have the matters investigated and to have a reply issued directly to the Deputy.