Ms Breda Crehan-Roche:

I would be delighted to do so. I am delighted to say that we will have all assessments of need in community healthcare west completed by the end of this month. The Deputy is quite right that we were one of the more productive CHOs. The major emphasis now is on intervention. That is the important element. We will have all of our children's disability network teams in situby the end of quarter two of this year, and that is where all the interventions happens. We are fortunate to have received and we welcome the additional money we will be getting this year for posts in community healthcare west. We will be deciding where those posts will go, and that will again be based on the mapping and the census of staff.

We obviously take our responsibilities very seriously and we work very closely across the care groups. The primary care and disability areas work very closely. The Deputy has quite rightly mentioned dietetics as one area that will require intervention. We are working with people with complex cases on FEDS programmes and we will be investing in that area and trying to see what we can do within the resources we have available.

We are therefore working very closely with our colleagues across the HSE, but also with the non-statutory section 38 and 39 organisations. Examples include the Western Care Association, the Brothers of Charity, Ability West etc.. We work closely across the services and our major emphasis is on intervention and ensuring that everything we do is child and family centred and that children receive the services they require based on their needs. That is being reviewed continuously.