Mr. Pat Healy:

We have not privatised the service. We currently deliver 50% of the service. Furthermore, the tendering process we engaged in did not cut services but actually increased them. We engaged with private contracting during the tendering because, in the greater Dublin area, we were introducing a far higher level of homecare packages. We were trying to implement homecare packages. The HSE does not deliver homecare in the greater Dublin area; it is done through the voluntary sector. We went to tender, and both the voluntary sector and the private sector compete through a tendering process. It was not done in the context of cutting services but rather in the context of extending services. Homecare packages have been funded, and over the last three years there has been an increase of 112 million hours. The service is now expanding. At the beginning of 2008, when the economic downturn came, there was definitely a contraction of service, but it was not related to the introduction of tendering.