Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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Dr. Muldoon has hit the nail on the head there, because the State is a big funder now. As a result it has serious skin in the game. I have a little difficulty with a situation where we have Tusla or the Department funding all these schemes and then acting as inspector. I appreciate it is imperfect, but at least there is an inspectorate regime and the legislation is being changed as we speak. There needs to be somebody or an entity like Dr. Muldoon's office that sits on top of that as well, so at least if we are talking about upholding the rights of a child or family there is a mechanism or door they can go through, so I take the point he is making.

I move to the issue of CAMHS and the children's disability network teams. At 8.45 a.m. I had a call with someone employed by a section 39 organisation who was trying to get a readout from me. She was telling me that through her trade union she and her colleagues were now in negotiations in the WRC about pay restoration. They have been made an offer of a paltry 6%, so there still exists this massive disparity in pay between workers doing comparable tasks who are employed by different organisations. They are all de facto employees of the State because they are all price-takers from the State. That is having a massive knock-on effect for the families I represent as well. I pretty much know what the answer is, but I wanted to get the witnesses' perspectives on this. Until we address the inequality in pay between two comparable roles, one being a HSE position and the other a CDNT or primary care team position, we are going to continue to have these service deficits because the HSE is poaching staff and recruitment and retention is a major issue, as is morale. I am wondering whether this is something that has been raised as an issue in the course of the office's conversations with any of the line Departments within its remit.