Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I will start by saying it has been a really fascinating and important conversation. I also support people with disabilities living in the community. It is an invaluable way of empowering people to realise their full potential. I have experience of that in my constituency where we have Stewarts Care and Peamount Healthcare which do incredible work empowering people with disabilities to live both in congregated settings but also, critically, in community-based settings.

I listened to Senator O'Loughlin talk about the Hollywood star in her constituency. We do not have a Hollywood star that I am aware of but I know that one of our Stewarts small screen stars appeared on "First Dates Ireland" recently. It is fantastic to see things like that. It is a real glimmer into people's day-to-day lives.

Crann sounds like an incredible organisation and while I was so pleased to hear of what it is doing in terms of training and supports from a continence perspective for special needs assistants, SNAs, and teachers, I was also disappointed because I cannot believe this is falling to it and that it is not Government-funded.

How can we offer that level of training right around the country? What funding do we need? Is it something that Crann could roll out? Is it something that we would need to do in partnership with others? It is soul destroying to think that the State does not provide SNAs with the necessary training to support some of the children they are working with, or that nurses require additional training that is not provided by the State in order to facilitate respite care. I would love to get under the hood of that and what we need to do to rectify it.

I was particularly interested to hear Ms Buckley speak about the transition period when her child was starting secondary school, and starting in a wheelchair. The supports provided were such a benefit to her, to her child and to the entire family in terms of the mobility programme, including the confidence training which every young person could benefit from. It got me thinking. It is probably an ideal world scenario but does she think it would be helpful or beneficial if we could pinpoint particular periods in people's lives that are likely to be key transition areas - for example, if they are starting secondary school, if they are moving to a wheelchair as the result of disability and or if their family is separating? Unfortunately, in many people's lives there are going to be many key traumatic experiences in childhood. Maybe we could map those a little better and increase service support at that time. It strikes me from Ms Buckley's experience as something that might have a long-term and lasting impact. I know she benefitted from wraparound supports that unfortunately not every family has, but I think her testimony has shown why it is so valuable and why we need to reach a point where every family gets that.

With reference to 2Gen, the research cases and analyses are always most compelling and it is really fascinating to hear what the witnesses had to say. In terms of Genio, it also works so well when projects are built around the need and the voice of the client. I would be interested to hear what the key challenges are but also what advice the witnesses would give to the committee, which has the opportunity to put the relevant Ministers under pressure from time to time. What advice would the witnesses give us to try and help our public services to be better at this? We know the constraints in terms of resourcing, retention and recruitment of talent. What specific advice would they give us that we could pressure the Minister with to try to increase this area to make it better?

My question for Crann is really around support for SNAs and teachers, and what it is already providing and how it could roll that out further. For Ms Buckley, my question is about that transition period and whether in an ideal world it would be worth mapping out those peak periods of stress, so we could support people better. I apologise if people can hear my office phone ringing in the background.