Mr. Seán Moynihan:

As a group, the Home Care Coalition does not campaign around funding for itself or its individual members. That is left for people to deal with themselves. It comes together really to propose the right to a home-care scheme, and to make sure there is an equitable and fair system that is well regulated. In some ways we have never discussed funding for our sector. I will speak of a different case, as CEO of ALONE.

We all know we have an ageing demographic and we all know the benefit this brings to our society. Every report we have ever seen shows that older people are net contributors to the community. There are, however, times and places where older people face either housing, health or financial challenges. The reality is that our sector - and I will just concentrate on the aid sector - is very small sizewise. In my time in ALONE, we have gone from around 75 volunteers to close to 7,000 and from three or four staff to 220 across the country. Considering the number of older people and given the data we provide every quarter on the demand for support among the ageing demographic, our sector is a little like that grant scheme in that it is probably stuck with regard to its ability to respond to a much lower population of older people than we currently have.