Ms Clare Duffy:

I have a very neat answer to the Deputy's question. The study done by the Vincentian Partnership to which Mr. Dunne and Ms Cox referred was based on a basket of goods and services that were priced in March last year, before the cost-of-living crisis. Before this crisis, the additional costs facing families averaged €244 per week. That has obviously increased. What is really interesting about that is that Sr. Bernadette Mac Mahon and her team in the Vincentian Partnership found that those additional costs do not only come from the things we know of and have talked about today such as transport and household goods. Families like Ms Budayova's, Ms Ryan's and Mr. Douglas's are also having to pay privately for services that are meant to be public. I do not think Ms Budayova will mind me using her example because she has given me permission before but she has just been advised by her local public health nurse to pay privately for an occupational therapist because she has no hope of getting one through the public system. That is the advice that is being given out. I do not blame the public health nurse in that instance. That is where a lot of these costs are coming from - paying privately for what should be publicly available.