Mr. Mark Byrne:

I will take those questions in reverse order. If there was drive and energy in the Department, the working group would already have been established. We are often told about competing priorities but a lot of resources are available. Our main reason for asking to appear before the committee today is that while these topics do come up for conversation, there is the political will to know that we are stuck in a broken system. There should not be any barriers to setting up a working group that is cross-departmental, engages with stakeholders and gets things moving. That should not be beyond us. For us, the follow-up with the Minister will be key to keeping that on the agenda.

Regarding children, Mr. Lennon will be closer to this. If 95% of those children do not have hearing loss, we are really talking about a robust screening process. Again, this should not be beyond the capacity of the HSE to set up a robust process whereby we can work through that waiting list quickly. If we ring-fence a small team of people, we would work through a list like that very quickly and really free up resources to go to the 5% of children who actually have a hearing loss. It needs to be very targeted. Public hospitals do not necessarily always work so I see something like a dedicated screening team focused on working through the waiting list. I think we would see good results from that.