Mr. Owen Collumb:

I will keep this brief because of the time constraints. To come back to Deputy Canney’s question, the unbundling of funding is key. I come from the area where I had an accident. I was physically able-bodied and moved into residential care. I moved out of residential care into a house in the community, where I was looked after by a different agency. Thereafter, I moved from that agency into the ÁT network, where I am at the moment. Now, I am looking at moving towards the demonstration projects. Unbundling the funding is a nightmare. To have funding follow the individual is something on which we need to work much more. There are restrictions. Organisations do not like you taking money out of one organisation and transferring it into a different organisation. There are no processes or guidelines on how to do that easily. Typically, for my disability, I would have a budget in the region of €120,000 to pay my personal assistants. However, agencies do not typically like you to move money from agency to agency within short periods. They have administration staff and back office staff to pay. As Ms Weldon said, the unbundling process is key. Movement of money restricts people from having their choices and going to different agencies. That is about it. The key point, as I see it, is the ability of people to move from one agency to another or to be the service they wish to be in.