Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the witnesses. It is great to have them here and I want to congratulate them all on their work to date. What has come across regularly in our meetings on PDS is the frustration, the absolute exhaustion and the desperate worry of parents. It does not really matter what the service is called. The parents and children just want the service. We have said there are good aspects to the PDS but progressing does not seem to be the right first word for that. Stagnating might be more of an accurate title at the minute. The witnesses have said that we do not want to throw it all out because there are wins in the model.

Do the witnesses, as researchers and practitioners, have faith in the HSE to make the radical changes that are needed to roll out the aspirational wants, as they were called, that were in the PDS in the first place? Is the HSE listening? Are they engaging with the witnesses on their research? I have read their opening statement and looked through their recommendations, which are quite solid. It is about making sure we research and have an evidence base. We speak here quite regularly about the lack of data. If people are not counted, they do not count. Has the HSE or Department of children engaged with the witnesses, or have the witnesses engaged with them on getting that accurate research and the evidence base in respect of what is going right and what is going wrong? We know there are loads of things going wrong. We also know that there are clinicians in the service who are working hard and well but we just do not have enough.

If there was that evidence base, as a domino effect, would it be the case that the quick fixes, the short-term and medium-term fixes would be pulled apart and would faith be brought back to our workers by saying we know you are doing well and we can do better? Let us face it, we all could do better and we can all learn. Nobody is an expert, nobody is an island and we all can improve constantly. I seek Ms Moran's thoughts on that. We have heard, from different clinicians coming before us on different visits about that assessment of need and how it is potentially inhibiting progress to a point because as we have it in legislation, we have to give that assessment of need. I am not a clinician and so do not know but we often hear that were a child put at the forefront, you could look at and work through the individual needs of that child, instead of getting that piece of paper. Are we putting resources into assessment of needs because it is in the Act but not putting the resources into the child to be able, for example, to use a toilet or go to school? Are we potentially focusing on the wrong thing? We are all caught up on this assessment of need and as a parent, I would want that focus to be on what my child needs. Is there a happy medium between those two things? I am not an expert and would love to know the panel's thoughts on that because we do need evidence-based research. I would love to see professionals getting engaged and working on that because our clinicians and practitioners do not have time for that. We cannot expect reports to be filled out and plans to be made by front-facing people on the ground who are expected to do both things. I have perhaps gone around the houses, so to speak, but I would appreciate our guests' thoughts on this.