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

That makes total sense. The local drug and alcohol task forces are doing incredible work.

I have several questions on staffing. I will ask all the questions first and then whomever wishes to answer can come in. Ms Leonard will want to address some of them, I am sure. We have heard in this committee before about the difficulty regarding staffing in some roles, such as psychologists, for example. Several of the witnesses raised this issue of staffing. What are the barriers and challenges which exist? Is it particularly difficult to attract staff to certain disciplines? What are the barriers and difficulties in respect of recruitment? Ms Leonard's submission referred to midwives and their training in respect of drug and alcohol liaison. How many of those do we have? How many are working now and how many should we have? What should the complement of staff be in that role?

The next subject might overlap with the issue of capital funding. We talked about capital funding for premises, which I absolutely accept. Do we need capital funding for other infrastructure? We are moving online with some services and, hopefully, we will hold on to some of those online services that we put in place to address Covid-19.

Is there a need for capital involvement in that kind of infrastructure? Does that require its own set of staffing that would not have been there before?