Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Whitmore for her questions. I watched the meeting last week. I have watched the committee proceedings for the past number of weeks, to be honest. I compliment the committee on all the speakers it has brought in because it is getting a wide flavour of all the challenges that are there. I was a spokesperson for children and youth affairs and a week never went by in my constituency office in Portumna or Loughrea when I did not have families come before me who were awaiting an assessment of need and it was not weeks or months but years that we were talking about.

When I took office in July, the standard operating procedure or SOP as it is known, had come into operation in January of this year. It had started before I ever arrived in office. In actual fact, the SOP is there now but because of Covid-19, it is probably not up and running to its full potential. As far as I was concerned when I took office, my issue was to address that backlog of 6,500 people. I want to crack the nut on this. I want to get to the stage where we are talking about interventions. We do not want to be in the position of facing the sorts of cases that Mr. Noble talked about last week around the country. We should be delivering on time and getting straight to the intervention piece.

The Deputy asked if I will pause the SOP for further engagement. I have asked what is happening with the SOP and was told that Fórsa was the staff representative organisation with negotiating rights for clinicians involved in the assessment of need process. I was told that the SOP was implemented in January following successful conclusion of the HSE engagement with Fórsa. That is exactly what has been presented to me. I have heard what Mr. Mark Smyth said last week about the clinicians. We absolutely need to listen to all parts of this discussion. I will make a suggestion, if the Chair does not mind. The committee needs to bring before it Professor MacLachlan, the disability clinical lead of the HSE, Dr. Cathal Morgan, head of disability services of the HSE, and Ms Angela O'Neill, national disability specialist and national lead on the assessment of need of the HSE. When the committee has had all of those people before it, has talked to the HSE and received presentations from the various representatives that have come before the committee, I will then further review the roll-out of the SOP.