Mr. Bernard O'Regan:

I do not know if there is an easy answer to that question. My estimate is that we will need approximately 7,000 additional staff across disability services over the next three to five years in order to meet our projections for the development of services – residential, respite, the various disciplines, etc. We will be doing our annual census of children’s services next week, so we will have current data in the next couple of months.

We know we are tackling the problem of 700 vacancies for clinicians at the moment. That is based on our current level of funding. It is not that we need more money. This is funding we have available. We know there is that level of staffing need. To be frank, our estimate is it will take a number of years. I would like to think we will make substantial progress in eating into that deficit over the next three years, but the reality is that, even as we are engaging with Ministers, the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and other Departments to grow the number of places, we will not see the outcome of that for the three or four years before those graduates come out of education. We are doing an enormous amount of work on international recruitment and so on. However, that is only going to be a piece of the overall jigsaw. On staffing, we need to be thinking in terms of at least the next three to four years to meet our current provision and what we might be providing. That might even be a conservative estimate.