Primary Care Services
Dail Éireann — 2024-05-22
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Colm Burke (FG), Cork North-Central

I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Health, who has asked me to thank Deputy O'Connor for raising it and giving him the opportunity to update the Dáil on this important issue.
The Minister recognises the central role that primary care therapy services, and specifically speech and language therapy, play in offering the opportunity for early and cost-effective interventions for children and young people. The Minister acknowledges that the increasing waiting lists for primary care services, and particularly those waiting for a long time to access services such as primary care speech and language therapy, is a source of real concern for clients and their families. The HSE has advised that an increase in referrals has resulted in increased pressure on primary care services. For example, the implementation of the national policy on access to services for children and young people with disabilities and developmental delays now means that more children and young people with non-complex disabilities and developmental needs are being referred to primary care services. Coupled with this additional demand has been increasingly complex presentations in primary care requiring more intensive interventions.
Notwithstanding the current HSE recruitment pause, there have been also persistent challenges in recruiting certain grades of health and social care professionals to meet the demands of primary care therapy services. Indeed, the shortage of such professionals has an impact across several service delivery pillars in the HSE, with competing demands for physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists, dieticians and psychologists across both general and specialist services in the community.
In summary, increased referrals combined with the challenges being experienced in recruiting therapy professionals in the HSE, has resulted in an increase in waiting lists for services across the country. In 2023 waiting list action plan funding of €3.5 million was allocated to primary care therapy services which saw more than 5,000 long waiters removed from the waiting lists nationwide. The HSE continues to work to address these challenges, with several initiatives under way including validation of waiting lists to drive increased productivity and ensure effective management of therapists’ time and a focus on reducing the numbers of long waiters. A significant programme of work is also currently under way between the Department and the HSE to develop standardised infrastructure and protocols to support systematic responses to primary care waiting lists. These are in line with similar protocols developed by the NTPF for hospital outpatient waiting list management. This programmatic approach is aimed at ensuring consistency at a national level to waiting list management in primary care, improved access to services regardless of location, as well as a greater understanding of the scale of demand, the drivers of demand and to allow for improved planning, interventions, investment considerations, enhanced productivity, and the most efficient use of capacity.
What the Minister is saying is that there is a challenge in relation to the increase in referrals and the difficulties in recruiting the staff that are needed for these services.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-05-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-05-22