Fianna Fáil has called on the Government to increase the number of speech and language therapists in schools across the country to reduce waiting lists.

The statement comes after HSE figures last week showed more than 8,000 children and adults were waiting on initial speech and language therapy.

Over 1,600 of these had been waiting for more than one year.

Charlie McConalogue, education spokesperson for Fianna Fáil, suggested that assigning a therapist to schools as required would be a key way of tackling long delays on waiting lists.

Where school sizes differed significantly, McConalogue said “some therapists could be assigned to a number of schools in a specific locality”.

Saying that the situation needed to be dealt with as a matter of urgency, Mr McConalogue added:

“There is ongoing concern about disparities in the provision of resources for special needs in our schools.

“It is imperative that they be addressed and a ramping up of recruitment of therapists combined with a programme that would see them integrated into schools and pre-schools could go a long way to addressing this”.

The statement comes after The Irish Times data report this week which highlighted the inequality in special-needs supports across the social classes.

That report showed the most socially advantaged areas of Dublin are getting nearly the highest allocations of special-needs supports.

This was found to be partly because of the ability of middle-class parents to get a diagnosis of disability for their children through private practitioners, which gives them an edge over less-well-off peers who face long waiting lists in the public health service.