Mr. Austin O'Sullivan:

There is no research showing that bigger is better in people services. In fact, the research we have done shows that when organisations get to a certain size, the person gets lost, so to speak. Our experience and the experiences of other community and voluntary organisations is that they arose out of the community to meet the needs of the community they serve. When organisations are disassociated from the people, there are far fewer outcomes for those people. It is a stated objective of the HSE to deal with far fewer organisations but I have yet to receive any evidence from it on the reason it believes that makes sense.