Ms Rosemarie Tobin:

I will now address the Department's role and the lessons learned from that. The CEOs of the NGOs were writing to the Department in relation to funding concerns when I started in my role in 2022 and we met with them at that time. Since then, we have worked with the NGOs and there were uplifts in 2023 and 2024 on that. Recognising there was a need to look at the funding model as a whole, the CCMA set up a review. That commenced prior to the issues at the trust. That had been agreed and the terms of reference had been set prior to the crisis at the trust. The Department worked with the CCMA and the local authorities on that review and a number of recommendations came out of it that were important in the context of what happened in the Peter McVerry Trust. One of those recommendations is that, in tender processes, local authorities should not be allowing tenderers to say fundraising is going to subsidise the service. The core service will be funded by the local authority and recouped by the Department.