Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)

Along with my colleagues, I thank the witnesses for coming in. We know they are extremely busy. I will not go through all their names - Margaret has done that - but I thank them. A lot of the questions I had proposed to ask have been asked. The witnesses have explained some of the issues. In a practical sense, as regards the one-door policy of getting someone in, I have had situations where people have moved with companies abroad and have had assessments of children in another jurisdiction, namely, the United States. In one case the child had ADHD, was put on medication, had settled very well with therapy and medication and came back to this country. We had no pathway to refer. We referred to CAMHS and got a very perfunctory letter back from our CAMHS service in Roscommon, which outlined that it could not believe in the diagnosis and would have to go through the process of verifying the diagnosis and that the child would have to come off medication in order to go through the process again. That is extremely frustrating if you have written two or three letters. It has improved recently - that was about 18 months ago - but that gives the witnesses an idea. Of course, there was no suggestion as to how we would obtain a service for this 12-year-old, who was still in primary education. That is just a practical example of the frustration on the ground.

I would like the witnesses' thoughts on the movement away from disability being seen as just a health issue and into the education sphere. How do they feel about that? It will not be an either-or. I imagine and hope that, even though it will create some tension in recruitment and retention in the health services, there will be a crossover between the education piece and the health service.

Mr. Gloster has explained the pay and numbers policy very well but it is an issue. We have a lot of representation from allied health professionals who have gone through interview processes and have been told there is a post for them but are ending up working as agency workers. That may not be right but that was in the midlands. I do not want to identify the people, obviously. I have had repeated representations on behalf of them. They have come back from the UK. Recruitment and retention are so important, and that is a practical example of what we hear back.

Mr. Gloster has answered about CORU. If there are qualified people who want to work in our services, there must be a way of recognising their qualifications but expediting that because there is a need here.

They are the main issues around this. The competition between different services for what is a definable resource will be the challenge. Would the witnesses be able to deal with some of those points?