Dr. Cathal Morgan:

The Deputy's points are very well made. I will address each of them and I will ask my colleague, Professor MacLachlan, to respond because it is relevant to some of the models of support on which he can speak.

The piece in terms of the Canadian model and the inclusion model is absolutely fundamental and is something we all should support from the point of view that, as I understand it, we are trying to implement a policy of mainstreaming where children with disabilities would be included fully in mainstream education settings. We must do all we can to support those children and their families to make that real. That is a challenge in the context of how we move from special education settings because there are conflicts in people's views on this as to whether it should be purely mainstream as distinct from a special education setting and as distinct from the mainstream setting with supports as required, but in the policy it is important that we drive towards that. I am confident that our networks, when fully resourced and bedded down and working well, can complement that in a real way by working conjointly with education partners. There is a difference of approach from the point of view that therapies provided in classroom settings are to do with educational attainment. What might be a distinction from the health and social care point of view is working with children and families on specific complex needs, whether it is behavioural supports, speech and language and so forth. The point is to put the child at the centre of the process with the family and let us work together to see what is best in their interest.

I will provide the Deputy with a report on staffing. I will mention a couple of matters. In response to the last Deputy, I referred to the additional 100 posts from last year and another 100 posts for this year. That is not enough; we need more. Again, I referred to the fact that, for us, the capacity review report is the basis on which we can build on these networks. There are a few other items from a resource point of view that are important to note. The Deputy mentioned the Minister of State who, I must say, has been strident and very energetic in getting behind us on making change. She is doing real work in respect of bringing investment. There is an additional €100 million in this year's budget. Our budget on disability this year is €2.2 billion. It is a specialist service. Again, the capacity review report identifies that we need more. There is no doubt about that.

The other piece I wish to mention relates to the pandemic. The Deputy is correct that we have been going through unprecedented times. Some children and families, quite a lot, have been much more impacted than others for a variety of different reasons. It is important to say that. We have been trying to do things differently, and Professor MacLachlan might refer to this, which we think will help in terms of changing how we do our practice on remote interventions and how we can work with people safely. This relates to another area the Deputy mentioned, staff leaving the disability services. From our experience, we feel there is a great deal of support from staff to work in these networks. It has been clear to us that staff benefit more when they are in an interdisciplinary team. We have been concerned that some staff have been working in silos - I know it is a dreadful term - and almost in isolation in school settings without the benefit of their peers working with them, if that makes sense. From a welfare point of view, that is not good. It is not good either from a clinical governance perspective. It means that the clinician is working in isolation and does not have the benefit of interventions from other disciplines working conjointly with him or her, along with education colleagues.

Professor MacLachlan might wish to address some of the points.