Mr. Michael Hennessy:

I will address that. In regard to the children's services, there are two things we would say. First, the progressing disability services, PDS, model is being implemented throughout the country. In part of the country it was implemented several years ago, in other parts the transition is taking place just this year. It represents a huge upheaval of services. Teams are being merged, people are moving from one team to another, and during or immediately after that transition teams are probably not at maximum productivity. We advocate that completing the transition as quickly as possible and getting those teams functioning and firing on all cylinders is important. We notice that parts of the country that reconfigured as far back as 2013 are running better than parts that are in the midst of the reconfiguration. Getting that reconfiguration completed and running as quickly as possible is important.

The other aspect, which is unavoidable, is resourcing. There were waiting lists before the new children's model PDS came into place, and they remain afterwards. There are more than 90 child development network teams, CDNTs, throughout the country. There is significant disparity of resourcing among teams. There are teams with good ratios of staff to children being supported, but there are other networks where resourcing is a long way short. We advocate for multiannual programme funding particularly to bring the resourcing of the CDNTs up to levels adequate to meet the needs to get timely issuing of initial assessments, family support plans, and timely interventions.