The programme for Government contains a number of commitments regarding the concept of early intervention. A constituent of mine recently received a letter from the HSE school age team in Dublin South-West. This parent was told that it will be 52 weeks before their child is seen. Will the Minister accept that this makes a nonsense of the idea of early intervention? Will he agree to speak to staff in the area where there is a shortage of staff and the school age team is broken? What can he tell the family of this child who will have to wait 52 weeks for intervention? The child has profound needs and is non-verbal. It is a sad case but one of many. The system is broken locally and it needs to be fixed.

I thank the Deputy for his question. If he wishes to provide me with the information on the individual case he raised, I will be happy to revert to him directly.

The waiting period is 52 months, not 52 weeks as I said.

While I am willing to look at the individual case and liaise with the HSE, what I would say to the family in question is that, contrary to the inaccurate information Deputy Micheál Martin placed on the record of this House, 100 additional therapists will be in post by 31 December. Budget 2020 has also delivered funding for 1,000 additional front-line staff by the end of 2020, which will mean more speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and physiotherapists. We need to make sure they are located in the right areas and not in accordance with the bizarre way the HSE was set up under Fianna Fáil. I will revert to the Deputy with more detail on this matter.