Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I want to go back to something that my colleague, Deputy Mairéad Farrell, touched on earlier and that is the role of NEPS and what exactly NEPS does and does not do. In my experience a family who are frustrated and in a position they have never been in before will reach out for any and all straws in the hope of getting some form of assistance provided to their child. In 2013, NEPS delivered 8,000 individual case work supports for children, just over 1.4%, as well as 5,300 support days, which works out as roughly a little over a day per school per year. NEPS is not the panacea of answers that some parents desperately need it to be. However, given the demographic change and given that we are likely to have slightly in excess of 40,000 children with some form of diagnosis within the next decade, to what extent should NEPS be developed?