Ms Mary O'Dowd:

I acknowledge that this committee is a sub-committee in regard to the new child and family agency. For that reason we thought it opportune to meet with the committee to discuss the current programme for Government and the introduction of the new agency. The politicians' constituents are our constituents as well. We serve the same group of people in the local towns and villages. John's presentation clearly demonstrated the length and breadth of the role of the public health nurse. The main point of our presentation is to inform the committee of the breadth of the role of the public health nurse and what we see as an opportunity to have a dedicated child health workforce and the need for it.

To refer to the members' questions, two members raised the matter of key performance indicators, KPIs. Key performance indicators are common within the health services and there are many of them. There are two within the child health service at present. One relates to that critical first visit. We are very proud that it ranges between 87% and 100% in respect of being on the person's doorstep within 48 hours. The second relates to the seven to nine months visit. As I said, that ranges from 38% to 100%, so obviously there no equity there. Both members asked where they emanated from. John can answer this better than me but there is a group within the HSE that examines and determines what should be the key performance indicators. There is none for the four subsequent visits, the preschool visits and the school visits. Again, it requires somebody to focus on that and develop those. However, we have systems for two of them. Hopefully, that answers that question.

With regard to the dental service, that is a separate service and I am not in a position to answer Deputy Ó Caoláin's question. I would not be familiar with it.