Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody for coming in. It has been fascinating listening to the work they have been involved in, particularly the animal-centric approach. All the questions I had intended asking have been asked. I will pick up on recruitment and retention. St. Joseph's Foundation was asked if it is feeling the effects that services are feeling and we heard the service is down 25% to 30% on staffing and the staff are feeling the effects of that. It must be impacting everywhere, for example, in providing cover for people who are out sick and so on. In the short term, the staff in St. Joseph's Foundation are managing to maintain services owing to their work ethic, empathy and so on. As far as recruitment is concerned, does Mr. Hegarty have a proposal or an idea about how we get more people into the services in the longer term? Pay parity would make a difference, as would targeting students in secondary schools to go into therapy work and similar services. It seems that if we do not try to deal with this issue, it will only get worse, particularly for current workers in the services. We have seen advertisements around Dublin city and in other places from Australian health services that are recruiting staff here. That will cause more problems. How can the issue of recruitment and retention be dealt with in the longer term?

Having listened to Ms Geraghty and Ms Carr, I would support the funding request for dog therapy services, as I know everyone here would. It would be well worth investing €500,000 in training assistance dogs. Ms Geraghty noted that the Minister had visited the centre and that Bernard O'Regan from the HSE supports Autism Assistance Dogs Ireland. The Taoiseach has met Cara Darmody and he has said assistance dogs should be funded. It will be important for the committee to push the need for that money to be invested in the area.

Deputy Tully asked a question on the figure provided of 100 dogs. Autism Assistance Dogs Ireland cannot train as many dogs as it would like to for children and adults with autism. If the organisation received that investment and was training up to 100 dogs, there would be even more demand for the service because people would know they would be able to access it. That would have to be reviewed every couple of years. We should push a strong recommendation from the committee that this funding be given to the Autism Assistance Dogs Ireland.