Ms Tanya Ward:

Developmental issues have a profound impact on children and young people but we can address and change it. For children under four who have developmental delays, we could look at intensive early years provision to catch up because they can catch up. Educationalists working with these children and families could help them with the transition to primary school. They will be behind everyone else by the time they start primary school and there is a general impact on their well-being, including anxiety and stress. Children experience stress due to their parents being stressed about trying to get through the day, travel and missing out on things. We could look at that. There are solutions to this in education. Some schools are doing very well already, especially the DEIS schools because they have some of the resources. They are looking for direction and support. One of the solutions that Grainne McKenna and Geraldine Scanlon came up with was having a number of DEIS schools working together with someone supervising who has the expertise to support the schools with their solutions. We know that this crisis will last until at least 2023 based on the statistics as they are at present. We need a time-limited solution to address it and to think about the school completion programme perhaps playing a bigger role in the longer term in tracking these children's development, keeping them in school and helping them to do well throughout the process.

The last matter is mental health and well-being. I was recently at a meeting with the housing charities and that was raised often. They think that psychologists are the answer. I said that it is a much broader issue and we need a spectrum of support for these children. It is possible to address all this through the right actions by the Departments of Education and Skills, Children and Youth Affairs and Health.