Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I asked about a potential refund for families. After this backlog is cleared, or even if this backlog is cleared, there will always be demand and the resources will not always follow. The Minister of State will know from her own experience that families are forced into a situation where they are waiting on the public list for an inordinate time. The pressure comes on them to take out a credit union loan to get a private assessment. All families will do that if needs be. Is there any scope, as per the ombudsman's suggestion, for some sort of recoupment of those costs for individual families at the family level? Could the State intervene to facilitate that family or, if the family made a request for the recoupment of expenses, could an application or some sort of protocol or process be set up to facilitate that?