Professor Malcolm MacLachlan:

To follow on from that point, having an honest conversation about this matter is important. There is an element of trying to balance the quality of an assessment with the quantity of assessments that can be done. A suggestion in Ms Justice Phelan's ruling is that more time should be spent on doing assessments. One of the implications of spending more time on assessments with a fixed resource is that there will be less time available to provide interventions. No one wants that on balance. We will need to deliver a new standard operating procedure that recognises a necessary trade-off - we want an assessment that is of sufficient quality to identify the interventions that people need but not an assessment that is so prolonged that it precludes the opportunity to provide those interventions.

Deputy Bacik asked about short-term measures. We will convene various stakeholders, including the professional bodies, all of which appropriately want to promote a good quality of assessment. Our role within the HSE and the clinical programme is to consider this matter systemically so that we are not only looking at the child in front of us and ensuring that he or she is getting a good level of assessment, but also at all of the children on the waiting list in the hope that they get timely assessments followed by appropriate interventions.

It is important to recognise, as Ms Justice Phelan did in her ruling, that delays in interventions cause subsequent problems for children with disabilities. For example, they can result in children developing secondary disabilities. We will have to have another go at squaring the circle - with fixed resources - of having a focused assessment that does a suitable job of assessing, while leaving enough resources to provide the necessary interventions.