Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

I do not have any specific information on the balance between directly employed and the number who are outsourced. We fund a large amount of home help provision through section 39 providers which do not appear in our own staff census numbers. We also fund the provision of home help through private for-profit or not-for-profit organisations. We are spending more money now than we were in the past on home help. If I am right, we are providing 10.5 million hours of home help albeit to 49,000 people. If one works that out, it is an average of four hours per week. That is not sufficient to meet the entire need and demand out there but it is the total level of resources that is available. There are issues in terms of getting sufficient staff numbers to provide hours. It is a combination of having reached the resource capacity or, where we have resources, a lack of available staff. We will provide directly or through a private actor.