Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I had just addressed the €67 million, the communication involved and acknowledging what the Deputy had said. The Deputy also referred to the backlog relating to the assessments of need. I was fortunate to secure funding of €13.5 million in the budget to address that backlog. Mr. Ó Conaill from the Department and I had a really good meeting recently with Mr. Gloster. The Minister has also met with Mr. Gloster. We did not meet him together. We give him two opportunities to familiarise us in relation to the wide range of needs within the portfolio. However, we did discuss the assessment of needs in depth. As part of the PDS roadmap and as part of the plan relating to it, he is an agreement that it needs to be radical, dramatic and very timely. A great deal of work has been done by the Minister with the help of his officials in preparing the PDS roadmap. As part of the discussion of the assessment of need, we decided that we should create regional hubs or what I would call centres, to ensure that families can be supported, either through a centre in their CHO in that sort of a breakdown, or each RHA. The decision rests with Mr Gloster and his team at the HSE. We need to have a targeted piece, while at the same time ensuring that interventions continue. We need to work with the private sector to address the backlog in order that there is a targeted approach to assessment. When assessment has taken place in these regional areas, there should be a decanting within the teams so that we would have somebody from the CDNTs present to liaise from an educational perspective. In that way, the children can go back into their proper CDNT team and be supported there. That is the plan. It is a long time in the making but now we need to see delivery on it. The Minister, Mr. Gloster and I are in agreement on this. To be fair to Mr. Gloster, I feel he has been very positive about addressing the issue.

Regarding the national treatment purchase fund, Mr. Gloster is working very closely with us to ensure that funding will be used, be it time-related savings or be it from the pot of funding that was gathered. This will enable us to provide assessments of need for all children who require them as soon as possible and it will allow them to go back to their teams.