Dr. Karen McAuley:

With regard to the HIQA standards, our understanding is the principal reason that new standards will not be developed is primarily related to capacity and resources available to HIQA. It can speak for its own process but it has a prioritisation process to decide what types of new standards to develop and when to do so. Consideration was given to our suggestion that new standards be developed on assessments of need in the context of this process. One of the issues in this regard is that, as the Chairman is familiar with, there are existing standards since 2007 but there seems to be broad consensus that the standards are outdated, too generalised and not aligned with HIQA's current methodology for standards. In some cases, they are factually inaccurate. The difficulty we have is they are the only standards we have. Despite their flaws they are what we have got. They cannot be retired, as we understand it, until new standards are put in place. We are in a funny situation really and in a sense what it comes down to is the importance of standards. Standards are there to do various things but one very important thing they do is establish clarity on what is expected, whereby services know what they are expected to do and families, parents and children know what they are entitled to expect from services. It is a real problem that there will not be new standards developed allowing that the existing standards are widely regarded as deficient.