Mr. Enda McGorman:

Perhaps I was harking back to when things were functioning and we had multidisciplinary teams that were staffed and resourced and everyone was able to do the work. The first problem is getting access for children. I am principal of a senior primary school so children are only with me for third, fourth, fifth and sixth class and then they move on. They could be in my school for the full four years without getting access to any therapeutic service, so the availability of people to work with the children is one issue. Communication is also an issue, as the Deputy said, and we have contact with local representatives when they hold clinics and families go in despair to them or they talk to them on the doorsteps or somewhere else. However, the problem is moving the piece on. I go back to the point I made earlier. The new assumption, especially under the HSE model, is that the parents are agents who are able to command all the services are their child and draw the services in. That is not the reality and parents experience massive difficulties in trying to negotiate their way around these services. It is similar for GPs. For me to talk to the GP of a child, I have to get the signed consent from the parent and email it to the receptionist to pass on the GP before the GP will take a phone call from me. We have to ask ourselves why. What is the risk? We are very conscious of GDPR and for the right reasons but sometimes that becomes a barrier to providing support to the child at the centre of this.

I keep coming back to the point that school is the one place that nearly every single child attends, so we have to refocus----