Dr. Ambrose McLoughlin:

I am very pleased to deal with the questions of the Senator. My Department has in place a value-for-money programme and we are currently exploring the best options in order to have the money follow the patient or, in this case, the client. The Senator is correct that every aspect of expenditure under the Vote of the Department of Health must be scrutinised because we are in extraordinarily difficult times. Therefore, we are working with the HSE. We are working very closely with all the organisations, which co-operate fully with us in these matters. We will be relying very heavily on all the organisations for their ideas and input into finding solutions. They, too, will want to achieve the best value for money, modernise their service and develop services of a high quality. We really do want a full partnership approach to building new services and a new system for people with a disability. This is a very strong commitment from the Department. There is a very strong commitment from the Minister and Ministers of State involved to work with all in the sector to achieve the objective of getting the best value for taxpayers' money.

We have done quite an amount of work on other aspects of the services. For instance, we have dramatically improved the quality of service provision in the acute hospital system. We are looking very carefully at the whole business of medicines management and though we have some distance to go, we have made significant progress in that area too. Across the system, in the last year or two, there has been significant progress and I know that the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, will announce some of these improvements very shortly in the House. He will be telling Deputies and Senators of the significant progress that has been made to date. In this particular area, I can assure the committee that obtaining value for money and completing the policy review of disability services are at the top of our agenda.