Mr. Ed Crotty:

In our area of Dublin south-east one gets emails every day from the local health officer offering a case or cases. The client gets an approved list of providers. Until recently he or she listed three providers that he or she preferred and, in turn, the local health office offered the case to the first, second and third choice until one provider accepted the case. That situation was changed in the 2018 tender and now there is a system which some of us call a case of the fastest finger. I mean an offer is made to all of the providers and whoever answers the email first is awarded the case. That is not a good situation because there is no time to think about whether one has an appropriate carer or service for the entire hours, for the week, etc. At the moment, our experience in CHO 6 and CHO 7 is that cases are being accepted by providers within one or two minutes of an email being issued.