Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. There has been a lot of debate within the service around the assessment of need. The position two years ago was that every child, or the majority of children, went through a significant assessment of many hours. One of the results of this was that we had more than 6,500 children waiting for an assessment. The clinical advice we got was that many of those children did not need the entire assessment, while some did. The expert view, and it is an approach used in Northern Ireland, for example, is there is an initial assessment where experienced professionals assess whether a child quite clearly needs one service, be it occupational health, speech and language or physiotherapy. There are other children who need much more rigorous assessment. It is a triage process. For those who are deemed to have more complex needs and need a multidisciplinary assessment, one is provided. This is the change that was made. Not everyone agrees with this. Not all of the healthcare professionals-----