Ms Sharon Byrne:

We hold budget meetings with the Dunlewey Centre once a year. During the meeting, the centre sets out the figures in terms of the number of counselling sessions the previous year. However, we do not go into that in too much detail. We leave such issues to be dealt with by the charity.

They will tell us how much they project they will need to run it next year. We increased the fee this year; it was €100 or €120 per shop but it was raised this year because there was a wish to start putting a little more into marketing and making the service a little more widely known. It was agreed that the larger players, with a substantially higher turnover per shop than the smaller independents, would pay double.