Mr. Bryan Meldrum:

The private sector has always responded to a need. The need starts with how much money we have to afford all the services that an aging population and other support and social care services demand. We have grown up on the basis that there is a finite supply. In terms of the overall spend within the health care sector, we have decided that there must be other opportunities in respect of spending this money wisely. With regard to development and meeting the needs of older people - because we are at a crisis point - the question arises as to how one spends one's health care budget when every year it is contracting. We are all joined at the hip. It does not matter who provides the service. The very people who entered health care did so because they really wanted to provide care. It does not matter whether they work for the HSE, the not-for-profit sector or the private sector. What linked them and brought them to an induction was the fact that they wanted to make a difference.

The standards of care we are now delivering are far in excess of what was there when I started in the past five or six years. We are growing at a phenomenal pace because demands to get people out of hospital and deliver continuing care within the home are rising all the time. Therefore, the investment is not just in people to take them from delivering what started off as home help. We are now delivering far greater levels of care and that level will rise because-----