Mr. Paul McBride:

I will come back to Deputy Canney on a couple of points and will reiterate something Mr. Collumb said earlier in relation to Áiseanna Tacaíochta, which is we are not a destination but are more of a journey, or a process. We see the ÁT network as an opportunity for people to develop capacity to manage their own support service. Then, they can move away from ÁT and sign their own service agreement directly with the HSE. There is no requirement to do that but ultimately, we see that as our final goal. At this point in time, as I said before, this is not available to the leaders. Therefore, for as long as they stay with ÁT, their arrangement via ÁT must be with the HSE.

To come back to Deputy Canney's question on funding, our board operates in a conservative and careful manner, working within our own capacity. Our numbers have grown by 18 over the last four years. Our recent proposal to the HSE, which was declined, was to grow our numbers by a further 18 over the next two years. To do that, we would have required an investment of €93,000, essentially to develop resources at our head office, to support those leaders who would have joined us. There would have been an offset, as Mr. Collumb referred to earlier, to the subscription fee the leader would pay to us for our service. Therefore, a net funding position of €53,000 was what we first put through to the HSE's national office, and then to the strengthening disability services fund. We were capped on the strengthening disability services fund at 1% of our public funding. That was €26,000. As I say, that was declined. That information gives a feel for the quantum. The demonstration projects look at 180 individuals and that was a €1.3 million budget. We felt that probably was not sufficiently resourced either.

On the point of tokenism Deputy Canney raised, the HSE's policy and strategy says the right things and uses the right language. The head of strategy and planning for disability services at the HSE addressed the Disability Federation of Ireland, DFI, recently. He talked about objective 5 of the HSE's corporate plan for 2021-24 on disability services, which was "to be the most responsive, person-centred model achievable with greater flexibility and choice for the service user". Certainly, at a national strategic level, the HSE uses the language we want to hear. Within the HSE's national service plan for 2021, personalised budgets are a committed area of strategic reform. It is there in the strategies and policies. However, it is unfortunate that the reality on the ground seems somewhat different. We are now three years down the road and we have made no progress on the demonstration projects. We feel, therefore, that the demonstration projects are under-resourced. There is a disparity between implementation and written strategy.