Mr. John Dolan:

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for his compliments and will address his questions first. He raised three main issues. On the question of not cutting pay and numbers, I was being a bit agnostic. I was just making the point that these are human services and 80% or 90% of them involve paying folk. In other words, it is not a small part of one's cost base but actually is one's cost base. I was simply saying that if there is no reduction there and there is no reduction in the cost of living then we cannot have more cuts to services and people's incomes. That equation can be turned around, but that is the basic point I was making.

The Deputy also raised the issue of creeping privatisation. The organisations in the voluntary disability sector are all registered charities. There are two tests for registered charity status: organisations must have a charitable purpose, and they must be of public benefit. We would see ourselves as brothers and sisters of the public service. One cannot look at the figures in our annual reports in the same way as one would for a private business. If one is numerate, one can tell whether a private business is working or not. However, when one looks at a not-for-profit charity, the figures only tell one whether the organisation has enough money to provide services. The real issues are the activities, the outcomes and the changes made to people's lives. These are the key issues.

The question of who is providing care, support and development for people is not incidental but is core, as is the development of real relationships. If people are viewed as units to be processed rather than as individuals with needs, their human rights are debased and their dignity is undermined. That is a quandary and a major issue across the public service. On questions like "Do the buses arrive on time?" or "Are the roads good enough?", it is simple enough to work out standards and assess outcomes, but it is much more difficult in the human arena. We have a long way to go as a country in terms of working out how we benchmark outcomes on a human level.

Deputy Boyd Barrett made reference to the most vulnerable sector and I would have to agree and disagree with him on that point. Disability strikes wherever and while well-off people might have an edge over others for a while, they will very quickly find that they cannot buy their way out of it. At some point they will have to go into the public system, whether that be through their children starting school or through the health care system. Disability services, like the fire service, are either there or not there. One cannot ring the fire service unless its there. That is an enormous challenge.

The Deputy also asked some questions about housing. In the context of the discussions around the disabled person's grant, we cannot have people waiting for a year or more for those grants, lying in hospital beds, costing the State more money. The cost is incidental, actually. The main point is that it is not right that people's lives are put on hold. To say to people that the money has run out halfway through the year is an obscenity, particularly in the context of once-off capital spending rather than ongoing spending on care. I do not want to rant on but I cannot understand how these issues, which have been plaguing us for decades, cannot be resolved. Surely we can sort out small capital projects, particularly given that Irish workers are employed to complete them, in the main. Such issues are a major source of frustration for people.

I will now deal with Deputy Doherty's questions. First, to be honest, I am not in a position to deal with the question about social impact assessments because I do not know enough about it. However, I will get back to the Deputy on it at some point in the future.

I am not clear as to what strategy the Deputy was referring to in her comments.