Mr. Turlough Kelly:

Regarding the terminology, there is a case that the phrase "complex needs" puts the cart before the horse. We might need a better, more descriptive term. In this instance, it is not that the phrase "complex needs" has been removed and replaced with better terminology or been described more adequately in the guidelines contained in the circular. What is alarming parents is the fact that it has disappeared completely. It has not been adequately explained to us or to parents how what was encompassed within the phrase "complex needs" will be encompassed in the model going forward.

In the context of joined-up thinking at Government level, one of the reasons we are all here is because this new model was deemed to be necessary as a result of the data from the CDNTs being deemed completely inadequate. We certainly take the Department's perspective on board there. The experience of the Department would seem to back this up. I am coming at this from an advocacy point of view. Our members really struggle to understand how we have these two multibillion euro behemoths of the HSE and the Department of Education and how it is apparently beyond the bounds of possibility for the CDNTs or some other mechanism within the HSE to feed accurate data to the Department of Education's model. In that context, we are having to go back and reinvent the wheel with a different model.