Ms Catherine Ryan:

The only point I wanted to make, as Mr. O'Leary and Mr. Ó hUallacháin have mentioned, is that the work that we do on public interest cases and childcare cases is among the most important work that we have. It takes up much of our time. On our last analysis in Limerick, defending those cases took approximately one third of our time. Some 60% of our available court days since the start of this year have been spent in the children's courts, defending those cases. They are important cases that should rightly take up much of our time. Those clients are very vulnerable. I am echoing that the service that we provide there is very important for access to justice. I will echo what everyone else is saying today about the issue of resources. My input as a solicitor on the board is to ensure that we are providing a quality service, which needs to be resourced properly.

Many of those childcare cases are very complex and various different reports are needed from professionals. We need to be able to resource those so we can do our job properly, given it is a very important job that we do in the childcare arena.