Gillian Toole (Meath East, Independent)

I thank everybody for coming in to meet with us, and their support team as well, and thank them for their briefing notes in advance.

I have a couple of updates that I can share. Maybe it is information that Cara and Mark Darmody may have had already. It by no means diminishes the urgency of and the impatience for what is required for children but in terms of the practicalities of the National Council for Special Education making contact with schools to determine what services children will need, that has been brought forward and that process will occur earlier in the year, again, this year. In terms of graduates - as Ms Darmody knows, in order to provide the services we need more speech and language therapists, more occupational therapists, more SNAs and more SENOs - there will be more graduate places coming on stream from this September. However, that is not enough, and it is not soon enough because the term will be three, four or five years to graduation.

In terms of what can be done in the short term, I agree with Mr. Darmody's point about pilot schemes. There have been many excellent pilot schemes that the HSE has run, such as Talking Buddies and Tiny Talk, over the years. They need to be taken off the shelf, provided to schools and provided to early years providers where work can be done, possibly using digital means whereby parents can access them. There is one occupational therapy programme which can be accessed online for free. It is a collaboration between the University of Limerick and the occupational therapists so, if a parent has concerns about a child's movement, they can query dyspraxia but by no means diagnose it. It is to pull all of the things that are available, such as the Enable Ireland YouTube channel, together into a tool kit that within a couple of months could be accessible to parents, early years providers and schools.

To clarify, I will be devil's advocate in terms of the law being the law and who is responsible for implementing it.

Responsibility for disability services rests with the HSE. I am not for one minute passing the buck or otherwise but in terms of resourcing there is a need to consider why there is a shortage of staff and why people are leaving. I take Ms Darmody's point about accessibility and the 37 psychologists who contacted her offering their services. In my area of County Meath there are very long waiting lists. If people are in a position to pay privately they can go the private route and the list can be shortened. In some cases, the same people can provide that service so there are difficulties and differences in that process.

In terms of the AON itself, I understand that it is required to access a special school but not to access services. The latter comes about through general practice, public health nurses and referrals. What can we do in the community that could happen in the next two to three months? I will give a couple of examples of what we will try to do tomorrow night with a small group parents in County Meath. I have an occupational therapist coming; a primary teacher who practises well-being and will help with dysregulation. It is a forum for parents to come together to tell me what they need and for people to network and say who in the community is available. We will try to put a series of workshops together. These are practical things we hope will help parents while college places come onstream and we try to link the education and training boards, which have introductory courses for school leavers, with Enable Ireland for work experience. How have interactions with the HSE gone? I have no clue how much time I have left.