FG criticises Cowen over child services

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny has criticised the Government for failing to provide adequate speech and language therapy services for children.

Mr Kenny claimed today waiting lists in Dublin alone had doubled in the last two years and there were now some 4,000 children waiting just to be assessed.

Speaking during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, he accused the Government of breaking its pre-election promise to tackle the issue and of “completely failing to recognise the scale of the problem”.

“I cannot understate the depth of concern and frustration currently being experienced by parents of children in need of these services,” he said.

Mr Kenny said that while there had been an increase in the number of qualified specialists, there was “no cohesion or coordination of service delivery”.

He said therapists were contracted to the Health Service Executive when the problem was intellectual and educational and not medical.

“There needed to be one umbrella organisation under the Department of Education set up to deal with the problem,” he said.

However, Taoiseach Brian Cowen insisted the Government had responded to the need for such services by providing more therapists.

He cited the establishment of new schools for the training of speech and language therapists in Dublin, Galway and Cork.

But while there are more therapists coming through the system, the Government was still trying to negotiate more flexible working arrangements as part of its Health Service reform programme, he said.

A problem was that newly qualified speech and language therapists were still required to work under supervision, he said.

“The way work practices issues within the system are operating is making sure we are not getting the outputs that we would expect.”