Professor Nicholas Kennedy:

Currently, to my knowledge, there are three hospital-based coeliac clinics in adult provision in the Republic of Ireland. In paediatric provision, there is one in Crumlin. I help with the coeliac clinic in St. James's Hospital. It is a fortnightly clinic with a small quota. The current waiting period for a new appointment is until July. In Cork, there is a coeliac clinic. It has stumbled over recent years because of the withdrawal of dietetic services from that clinic, but these have now been restored.

In Galway, there was a period of several years where the specialist had retired and the coeliac clinic did not operate. Now it is operating but like the other coeliac clinics it is not fully serviced and I understand there is no full-time dietician associated with it, so the existing three coeliac clinics are not adequately provided for in the hospital service plan. The density of population needs to dictate where the coeliac clinics should be properly located. So far as I am aware there is not one in Limerick. A scoping exercise is needed to give a proper answer to how many coeliac clinics are needed and how frequently they need to be offered. I cannot easily give that information off the top of my head.