The programme for Government seeks to reduce the waiting time for children accessing assessments of need. The feedback I have got from people in Clondalkin and Lucan is that children are getting partial assessments of need under the standard operation procedure but they are not getting the treatments they need such as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and child psychology. Children are being moved from one list to another without reaching their developmental milestones.

I received a reply to a parliamentary question in respect of a child, Jake, whose original application for an assessment of need was made in January and he got an standard operation procedure, SOP, assessment in June. The completion of Jake's final assessment of need paperwork has been assigned to a private provider. Who is that private provider? How long is it place? What is the purpose of that private provider? This process has been under way from January to November and whatever is going on it is not working.

I will take that question.

I had a feeling the Minister of State would do so.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. He is right that we have 554 outstanding assessments of needs that need completion at this time. He is also right that some of them were outsourced because we did not have the skill set. That was done with part of the allocation of €7.8 million in Sláintecare funding.

In regard to Jake's care, if the Deputy wants to take the matter up with me afterwards, I have no problem speaking to him.