Mr. Paul McBride:

I will respond to Senator McGreehan's point about not reinventing the wheel. I agree with Mr. Cawley on legislating to guarantee the right to a personal assistance service. It needs to be addressed.

A large amount of work has been done by the task force, which is represented on this call. Mr. Crombie Angus, Mr. Collumb and Mr. Ryan were participants in that task force. Its report recommended the demonstration projects. We are all agreed that the demonstration projects are the vehicle for assessing the variations of personalised budgets. If there is one message that I could get across to the committee, it is that we ideally need to see some positive and meaningful progress on the projects. This is not meant to criticise, given Covid and other reasons, but there was meant to be a report in June of last year and we have still not seen any great momentum. If the committee put its political weight behind the projects, it would be wonderful. We need to see those projects brought to a conclusion in order that we can move forward with whatever they recommend as the correct model or models for a personalised budget.