Professor Malcolm MacLachlan:

I might respond to a couple of questions. The Chairman asked which CHOs were involved in the next phase. Ms O'Kelly's organisation, CHO 7, is one of them and we are just finalising arrangements with CHO 4.

I agree with everything Mr. O'Regan said regarding the Disability Act. It is also important to point out the Ombudsman has called for revision of the Act, as has the Disability Federation of Ireland. The basic issue is it does not work for people with disabilities. It was enacted in 2005, which means it was developed several years before then and, of course, the most significant legislation, that is, the UNCRPD, came into effect in 2006. The Act predates that and in 2018 Ireland ratified the UNCRPD, which means we are obliged by international law to abide by it and the Disability Act does not allow us to. It certainly is not a matter of the HSE running away from things, rather we it to be aligned to allow us to better deliver on services. One of the ways of doing that is to ensure when we are revising the EPSEN Act, we are also revising an interlocking Act because especially around assessment of needs there are obligations from health services and education services and that has not been working. This is a real opportunity to try to make it work.

On training, one of the things we have previously advocated for, especially with some of the new technological universities that have not been doing professional training in health and social professions, is that there be some exciting opportunities to establish new courses where people could all train together in an interdisciplinary way. They could be located in geographical areas where it is perhaps more difficult to retain staff, because all the research evidence shows that when people are trained in particular locations, especially rural areas, they are much more likely to stay in those areas.