Mr. Damien O'Reilly:

Regarding the first question on the relationship between the service provider and the users, many of the organisations administering the payment are not DPOs. They are running the services but they are not engaged with disabled people. There are able-bodied people running the service in the way they think they should, but they are not asking people with disabilities what they need or what they require, and they are not consulting disabled people.

The Deputy mentioned the budget regarding personal assistant hours. One of the problems with this is that a lot of that money will be spent on administration as opposed to going to straight into services to be used by the individual. This is the main problem in that the administration costs on the payment are very high.

Disabled people have to sacrifice hours of support just to manage the funding in the first place. The money equates to hours so the money being taken to pay for the administration costs means fewer hours for the individual. The Deputy also mentioned the personalised budgets pilot. I was not involved in this pilot project because my company had been set up when it came into effect. I know of other people who engaged in that pilot but they had the same problems. There was not that much support for the individual during the project. There was really nobody to answer questions or assist those involved in the pilot. I hope that answers the Deputy's questions.