Mr. Keith Poole:

In response to Deputy Dowds, there is a move within our public service to outsource and tender and I shall give a recent example. The Department of Social Protection recently put out to tender a programme called JobPath which is a work placement programme. We have partners in the UK - a plc in the UK - where we share a prime contract under the Department of Work and Pensions for the delivery of work programmes in Wales and the south west. We looked at that programme with our partners. Interestingly, it is a payment-by-results model and, therefore, one must get a job to get paid. That is the model that works in the UK.

The JobPath model that we looked at here was tougher than the UK model. I think, absolutely, we have said everything that we are going to say. In terms of services that are being delivered to this State, there is an issue whereby they are being "businified", for want of a better word, or turned into businesses.

Let us examine home care or home support, as mentioned by Deputy McDonald. The HSE is now looking to get people to enter half hour visits by tendering.

Perhaps we have been accused of being a little bit corporate but on the other side of that coin - and I am not disputing what has been said - there is a push from State agencies to get more value for money, more tendering and more private enterprise in the health services tendering for home care and home support work. That leaves organisations like us slightly schizophrenic because we are caught between being a business, charity and a service provider. We need to define ourselves but also to be cognisant that the funders - the Irish Government - is pushing for value for money. It is pushing organisations like ours to reduce costs, which is fine and laudable, but also putting services out to tender. An example is the Department of Social Protection scheme JobPath, which major players such as G4S and A4E looked at. I am not sure who submitted a bid but we looked at it and decided that it was too risky because we would never get the anticipated outcomes. There is a big push to get services out to tender and to get value for money. We cannot argue with that and it is great but we must compete with the private sector to a degree. I see more of that coming down the track.

In the UK, it is about getting someone a job and getting paid sustainment payments. The organisation gets paid every three months while the person is in a job. I am not knocking it but it is the programme being pushed out by the Department of Social Protection and it is the way opportunities are being presented to our organisation. To be fair to Ms Kerins, that is where she was coming from in respect of the commercial aspect. We are being driven all the time to compete against the private sector.