Mr. Robert Watt:

I agree with the Deputy. Government policy has been to increase the level of home supports in the past number of years. Some 22.5 million hours is the number for this year. The challenge the Government faces, as the Deputy identified, is finding the staff to provide the service to people. That is a function of wider issues in the economy with regard to availability of work and wages and so on. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has published a very good report which sets out the challenges and a series of actions to change the conditions of employment, increasing pay, dealing with the issue of people not being paid for travel and looking at visa and regulatory issues. The Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has set out a programme and she is pushing that very hard, but I absolutely agree with the Deputy. We all accept the problem and that the policy is to keep people at home and have home supports. The challenge is to get people to provide that support.