Ms Clare Murphy:

I might try to answer some of those questions. In relation to the geography, every child in the country will be mapped to one of these three Barnahus services. It does not mean that it will be near the child. For some children, there will be a considerable distance to travel. In an ideal world, we would love to be designing more Barnahus services than we are but we really need €1.2 million to get off the ground with these three. It can, therefore, be incremental, but, for now, though, we are trying to design three service areas and every child in the country will be mapped to one of these. Admittedly, there will be a distance involved for some children.

I know the Deputy feels very strongly about colocation. We looked at this issue about 18 months ago and decided it was not practical and feasible.

I do not believe that you have to be co-located to have good communication. There is really good communication. We started by having a principal social worker, PSW, co-located and our recently retired national manager was also co-located. It is something that we will very much keep in mind. I know the Deputy feels very strongly about it.

As for specialist interviewing, we have had issues in relation to social workers who trained as specialist interviewers being freed up to do so because of the demand on our system. We have addressed all of that and have plans in place for joint interviewing. The social workers we were training up to do joint interviewing will be freed up to do joint interviewing.

There was other question around CARI. I do not know the answer as to whether or not CARI will be involved with Barnahus West. I am sure it will attend some meetings. It will not necessarily be an integral part of the team but it certainly will be attending, I imagine.