Mr. Kevin McCarthy:

They are funded as part of a mainstream budget. In other words, people who have a disability benefit from a particular service in the same way as everybody else. It is not possible to carve out precisely the entire scope of service that an individual person with a disability is getting and say it can neatly be transferred to another Department. This is where some of the complication comes in. Clearly, 70% to 80% of the services we are speaking about can be ring-fenced, defined, packaged and transferred but there are overlaps between what the Department of Health will oversee and what we will oversee. This is where the complication kicks in. It is in terms of ensuring we have the protocols, operational agreements and joint oversight arrangements in place to ensure we can look at it through a rights-based lens and be satisfied the right services are in place at the right time for the right people, that we have a clear line of sight on this and that there is accountability in respect of it while, equally, the Department of Health enjoys the continued oversight and responsibility it needs to exercise in respect of the mainstream element.