Departmental Schemes Dail Éireann — 2021-07-01 ============================================================ Marian Harkin (IND), Sligo-Leitrim I thank the Minister of State for her response, and as she rightly says, those services are extra. I am making such a strong case for that region to be included because the services there are virtually non-existent. I mentioned the waiting lists, but that was not my only question. I also asked about the positions allocated and filled. Looking at the area of occupational therapy, only 84% of the positions allocated have been filled. For physiotherapy, the figure is 90%. For speech and language therapy, however, only 59% of the positions allocated were filled in the Sligo-Leitrim region. I got those figures in an answer to a parliamentary question in March this year. Those figures are heartbreaking. Each statistic represents a child and a family. The Minister of State does not have a magic wand, but this pilot programme can make a significant difference and I ask her to strongly consider this region. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-07-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-07-01