Paul Murphy: Scandalous waiting lists for child therapy services

The way that children with additional needs are failed by this state is nothing short of scandalous, I have no end of parents contacting me on waiting lists for long times, no end in sight, and what it comes down to is understaffing, underfunding of our health service and an absence of therapists. I will give you one particular type of example, which is massive shortages in terms of speech and language therapists in the Taoiseach and Dublin South West area, I have had multiple parents share their stories with me, I will give you some, quote, the waiting lists for our area are much longer than the children she is in class with, and live in areas where they are not having to wait, unfortunately the children of Taoiseach are disadvantaged due to long waiting lists, another quote, at the time of assessment she was the only paediatric speech therapist in the Bally Bowdoin primary care centre, there should be four, it took several months to fill one position, and that is all they could fill due to an embargo on staffing, which seems insane to me, as I thought the government were full of promises to address services for children's disabilities. HSE has told me that it is currently 50% staff vacancies in speech and language therapy department for Dublin South City, and speech and language, it is other areas as well, I get answers back from the HSE, I have one here, which says we are actively recruiting for its vacancies, the CDNT, but the parent in this case was told by a woman who is on the front line, that there is a recruitment embargo, they are not recruiting, and it does not seem to me that they are recruiting, because the vacancies still exist. Thanks very much. Thanks very much. Thanks to deputies for raising a range of issues. I appreciate Deputy Boyd Barrett's point that we do need to do more and do better when it comes to children's disability services. Mr. Cair MacNeill had written to me specifically about a number of cases in Dun Laoghaire that seem to be particular concerns in terms of the scale of the teams, indeed you have referenced a number of them there today, whether it is Louis or Theo and others as well. There are two issues here, and it brings me to Deputy Paul Murphy's point as well. The issue in relation to school places, there is a change of approach being taken in relation to school places, and we will look seriously at your bill, Deputy O'Meara, which sounds to me instinctively to be logical, but let's look at it in some detail. There is a forward planning unit that is now being set up in the Department of Education in relation to special schools and children with disability and planning. This can't be rocket science. People know a child who is X age is going to require a secondary school place and it seems to me that this hasn't been happening at an early enough point. We will get to the point I can stand here today and I can tell you with a degree of confidence that every child will have a school place in September. I get that. That is good. I can sometimes miss the point, though, that the level of stress and anxiety and worry that that child and their family goes through. Point taken. I am happy to follow up the additional, the specific cases if you wish in relation to that too. I can assure you of this because I have looked into this, Deputy Murphy, this is not an issue of embargo. I accept the HSE has to live within its budget and we can debate what is an appropriate level of workforce, etc. We have, and I can probably send you the figures, I don't have them to hand, but the amount of fully funded vacant posts we have in children's disability network teams is a significant cause of concern. Look, there is a little bit of encouragement, we ran a recruitment campaign that I think concluded a little while ago and at the end of May 160 offers were made to successful candidates. I am going from my memory here rather than my note, but I think around 53 job offers from that 160 have now been made and processed. There is another recruitment campaign about to be run as well. They are also looking at new innovative ideas around therapy assistance and new grades in that space. It did work in other areas like psychology in the past. They are looking at things like student sponsorship programmes as well. But I can absolutely tell you, and I met Bernard Gloucester, the head of the HSE on this only about a week ago. On this occasion there are other issues you can point to funding challenges I am sure, but on this issue we actually have more funding allocated than posts we can currently fill. We need to work intensively in relation to that, and we are. The second thing we need to do is increase the number of people that we are training in these spaces. I want to thank my colleague Minister O'Donovan and the Minister for Health and the Minister for Education for some work that has been done in relation to very significantly increasing the number of training places in Irish universities from September. It doesn't fix every issue, but it should provide us with a pipeline of graduates coming out of Irish universities in key therapies like speech and language, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and others. I am pleased that that will kick off from September. Try it again? Well, I think there is certainly, I think there is an interesting, there is a very interesting discussion to have particularly when people do that at Masters level. I am a big fan of reducing fees, I did it twice. But at Masters level in particular, I think there is a conversation to be had about if you are willing to work in the Irish Health Service in particular, is that an intervention that could be made? That is under active consideration, Deputy. Deputy as well. Deputy Amarku, I take very seriously the point about the concern of the people who have been talking to Dave, who is due to retire on Monday but has no wish to retire on Monday, nor do the people of Dundalk wish to see him retire. I will ask my colleague Alan Dillon, who is the Minister of State with responsibility in that Department, to see if anything can be done. There is obviously a role for the local authority there as well, that I do not wish to speak for. Your office might contact Minister Dillon as well after this, and let us see if there can be clarity brought in relation to that. In relation to Deputy Toby and I have a detailed note, but not for this question unfortunately, so I am happy to write to you on it in relation to children in care who have gone missing in our state. It is a serious issue and it is taken seriously as well. I do believe we need to do more in terms of beefing up our child protection services. I would argue we have made a number of steps in recent years, whether it is constitutional change, legislative change, the establishment of Tusla, but certainly your ask will we do more in relation to the budget in this area is one that I will take very seriously. Thank you very much.