Ms Fiona Larthwell:

A guess is all we have. Some research by the ESRI suggested that up to 25% of provision could be being delivered outside the scope of the HSE and its funded services, but that research was done prior to 2020 or thereabouts and, because of the additional investment, we expect that we have probably pulled some of those people into the HSE-funded net at this point. However, it is hard to tell. At some point, The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing, TILDA, estimated unmet need to be approximately 26% and we are not sure whether the unmet need is actually being met through private provision or just going unmet. These are the kinds of things we really want to find out and that is why we are looking to register all home support providers and not only those working for the HSE and HSE-funded services.