Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)

I thank the witnesses for coming in today. I too apologise for being absent earlier. I was at a meeting of the health committee, of which I am a member, but I have read the witnesses' statements.

A lot of the questions coming at the witnesses are probably rehashed, but one of the things that caught my eye is the problem of expulsion and suspension from school, which is a situation that is often complicated by poverty associated with disability. Impoverished families often have people with complex needs in their own homes. Are there solutions to this? It seems to be a very final event. It also puts enormous pressure on services outside the school. I am not expecting teachers to carry everything within the school but there must be another way to do this. I was taken by the idea for rural schools and the clustering of schools for the provision of therapies within the school setting. I think that is a good idea because we have that in the management of schools, where there is a clustering of small schools that share managers. It is one of the things that the INTO has been asking for in its pre-budget assessment. It is a really good idea and it makes sense. The special schools are not DEIS schools by nature. Is that because they already receive enhanced funding and support?

Respite care is a massive issue for me as I worked as a GP in my past life. It is the difference between making and breaking families and parents who are under enormous pressure. I know there has been a commitment in the budget to increase respite places, but it should be something that is enshrined by right for parents, certainly with children with very significant additional and special needs.

I raise the competition among the various services, including the HSE, the CDNTs and now education for allied health professionals, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists and all the full panoply. How can that be addressed? What are the witnesses' views on that? One of the issues we are having in the primary care sector is looking at the model of primary care and whether it is attractive or not for young people coming out of college, highly trained allied health professionals, to go into single, isolated places, often working on their own and not working in very creative teams. It would appear we cannot attract people into those positions. How are the witnesses finding that in their own settings?