Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for letting me back in. I am mindful that while many areas within the remit of this committee are just emerging from an extraordinary time that upset many of our normal, day-to-day services and processes and stalled the progress we would have liked to have seen achieved in 2020, we are also now moving into a new period where, hopefully, we will see Sláintecare fully realised and implemented.

One of the issues that will come up in that new era of what I hope will be a more community-driven model for healthcare is the importance of the cross-disciplinary team and what types of staff members are important for rare diseases. Ms McGrath stated that physiotherapists or occupational therapists might not know about a particular rare disease or have the full complement of education on it but my experience relates to dieticians. My child has a rare disease and I have a real difficulty with them in regard to that sensory issue. The hierarchy of how those community teams work is going to be incredibly important in terms of who knows what and who is in charge of what. What are the priorities from the perspective of the witnesses both in terms of the pathway to accessing genetic testing, care and counselling and on the other side once a person has the diagnosis accessing the correct soft supports? The question is for both Dr. Lynch and Ms McGrath.