Mr. Odhr?n Allen:

The Deputy's question on whether an AON is always needed is not up to us to answer because people have a statutory right and entitlement. Why did so many families go the statutory route to hold the HSE to a timeline within which it must give the child an assessment? It was because of the lack of provision of assessment and intervention in paediatric disability services. PDS was to try to fix that. Here we are all these years later and it is worse than ever. Families will continue to go the statutory route because the alternative is to see their child languish on a waiting list. We will be dealing with this unfortunate problem where so many of the available resources, which are not adequate, are being put into doing AONs.

It points to the fundamental problem. We need to provide a better and better resourced paediatric disability service so we do not separate assessment and intervention. I think we all agree the best model is where there is no such separation. If our professions were able to deliver a gold standard service, there would be a fluid approach to assessment and intervention where you start assessment and intervention, and the intervention informs the assessment. It is not black and white. The worst thing ever was separating assessment from intervention. We are far off the gold standard service which is fluid and where professionals have the autonomy to engage in the appropriate assessment for a child or family and then try out particular interventions as they see fit, using their own clinical reasoning to make those decisions. That is where we should be trying to get to.