Funding of therapists for Cork's St Killian's Special School to be raised at Forum tomorrow 

A motion calling for the immediate funding of therapists for St Killian’s Special School on Cork’s northside is to be discussed as ‘a matter of urgent importance’ at Thursday’s meeting of the HSE Regional Health Forum in Cork City Hall.

The motion is being brought by Peter Horgan, the Labour Party councillor in Cork South East, and follows a meeting held last week between local politicians and parents at the school at which they made an appeal for therapists to be located at the school as a matter of urgency.

There have been no occupational therapists, speech and language therapists or behavioural therapists in special schools since early 2020.

It followed the introduction of the HSE's Progressing Disability Services programme. 

Pledge from Minister 

Disability Minister Anne Rabbitte has pledged to restore therapists to special schools and last November she met with a delegation including the principal and parents from St Killians. 

During that meeting, she pledged she would make €150,000 available to fund St Killian’s to hire therapists privately and they put the arrangements in place for this to happen.

However, instead of getting access to the promised funding, St Killian’s Special School was told a pilot scheme would be set up and it would include a number of Cork schools in that initial tranche. 

When that was announced in late August, however, St Killian’s was not included.

The motion being brought by Mr Horgan seeks to avoid ‘political party argy bargy’ and is focused on securing the finance that was promised for ‘the interim funding of school therapists in St Killian’s’.

“If it means other special schools will want to create a similar workaround given the dearth of therapists in the system, so be it,” said Mr Horgan. 

System 'has not worked'

The delayed implementation of the pilot scheme served as a backdrop to comments made by Tánaiste Mícheál Martin during a radio interview at the Fianna Fáil think-in in Dublin this week.

The Cork South Central TD expressed his frustration at the lack of therapists in schools and the need to get multi-disciplinary teams into schools.

“In education, I would argue, and I accept that there are certain areas which annoy me and make me angry – therapies for example,” said Mr Martin. 

“I think that the system in terms of progressing disability has not worked for parents, has not worked for families, and that’s why Fianna Fáil want a completely new departure on where we’ve been on special needs therapists in particular.

“I want multi-disciplinary teams in our schools, starting with special schools, which we had 20 years ago but the new system which the HSE brought in 2013 and the then Government has not worked and families have not got the therapists or access to therapies they require and that’s something I would acknowledge and I have a clear policy platform now which is at variance with what a lot of people in the system would want.”