Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I will give two sides to that briefly, the upside and the downside. I have met with parents of children with disabilities from Donegal twice. I met them with others from Sligo. They tell me, because of the focus put into the children's disability network team model last year, they went from having no time for or belief in that model to now believing it is a very good and effective model that is working well for them, albeit they need more, but it is working very well. Those CDNTs include occupational therapists and others. We did a very concentrated recruitment for disability in Donegal, and I think we made great achievements in that. Regarding respite, I worked in the mid-west for many years, and we used section 38 and 39 agency providers. In Donegal it was all indigenous health board provision. A lot of people built good services there over the years. Some of those are very big institutional services that now have to wind down because they are just not suitable. Respite in every county in Ireland for people with disabilities, particularly children, is a challenge and, even though we are growing the service, the demand is going ahead of what we are able to do.