Mr. Kilian McGrane:

The issue is that we would need to see whether that register can be adjusted and what is technically required to put in the retrospective aspects of it. The broader issue is that the Minister has requested the HSE's clinical specialists to meet with FACS. Within that, one of the first things we have to do is quantify the scale of the challenge faced by families. That means we need some database of people affected.

This flows neatly into Deputy Donnelly's question about the range of services. We need to quantify the scale of the challenges in order to map out the service pathways and identify the associated costs. I appreciate it is small in a total budgetary context. However, if there are 400 families with complex multidisciplinary needs, we need to make a budget provision for that. The budget provision would also need to include a register if we are to establish one. It is a fairly significant piece of work. The first phase is that we get the right clinical experts to meet with FACS to ensure we have a full understanding of the breadth of challenges they face. We can quantify the scale of the problem and then put together the plan for how we resource this prospectively. Obviously the issues retrospectively are separate and I think they have been discussed at this stage.