Mr. Paul Reid:

Like the Deputy, we in the team share the frustration and anger when we have failed some children. As the Deputy and Professor MacLachlan stated, there are many families across the country that have been served well. However, that does not do anything for the people who have not been served well or who have been failed.

The Deputy put specific questions about engagement with higher education. We have had such engagement with departmental officials and the Minister. The Minister of State spoke about taking that up. We had a recent meeting that led to us feeling there are potentially innovative ways for the higher education sector to work with us to strengthen the pipeline. It is something the Minister has taken up.

We have had engagement in our own teams with the private sector about some of the backlogs that exist, both in terms of assessments of need and how we might be able to use some funds to engage the private sector to address the backlog in that regard. It is something we are actively pursuing. Again, to qualify the issue, it is not as if there is an endless resource out there but whatever is there we want to use to address the matter with the funds we have.