Ms Siobh?n McArdle:

The national access policy for children is about ensuring that children, regardless of need, have one door to enter in terms of pathways of service. That means within CHOs the policy speaks to the expectation that the primary care teams providing children's services liaise very closely with the children's disability network teams, and that the two teams working together ensure that for families and for the child, the services provided focus on that child. For some children it may be a period with primary care, for instance a speech and language therapist but if the child has more complex needs, he or she may need two or more complex interventions. In that case such children get those services in the children's disability network team. What we are seeing in terms of disability services is the development of the children's disability network teams and I know this has come up in the committee before. We see different levels of completion of those teams across the country. The focus for the HSE, and it is very much a HSE policy, is to ensure integrated and cohesive delivery. It is certainly important that we see and are able to get that update from the HSE around how that integration is working, and having metrics that speak to getting that assurance from the HSE that it is happening for families. The Deputy has given an example from Cork, which is possibly more to do with adult services and around transport.