Mr. Michael Fitzgerald:

I think that the HSE would like to see a stand-alone scheme for home support.

The reason we would like to see that is that it should dovetail and should be symbiotic with the nursing home support scheme. The nursing home support scheme is a stand-alone scheme and has been so for a number of years and has worked its way in as a model of service of support of people needing long-stay care. It supports 23,500 people with high-level requirements at any given time. The point we would make is that we would like to see a scheme that would be an alternative to that, an attractive scheme, that would maintain people in their own homes. They would be two quite distinct schemes but they would have to work closely together.