Colette Kelleher (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Unfortunately, it is both. The organisation and culture issues cannot be underestimated and neither can the inflexibility of the systems. Expenditure on social care services for people with disabilities is €1.5 billion but it is very tied up. If people say they want services delivered differently, it is extraordinarily difficult to do that in response to them. We might have the same amount of money we want to spend differently but it is extremely difficult because of the way the systems operate. There are shortfalls as well. If one looks at the annual report of Cork Simon Community, where I worked for eight years, it shows that it has to fund-raise half the money it needs every year to support 1,000 people in the city. There is a funding shortfall there. Services and supports for people who are homeless in the city should not be reliant on the kindness of people. They should be on a stronger footing than that.

It is great when people are generous. I was very grateful when I was working in that organisation because it allowed us to do certain things. One of the things we did was walk-in counselling. Very often people with addictions could not access counsellors because they had to be sober. People were not going to become sober overnight, yet they had to make that leap. We innovated in that way with walk-in counselling. Someone might not be able to wait three weeks for an appointment. They might need to see a counsellor at the time. That is an example. It is an organisational and cultural issue but there are also big resourcing gaps.