Mr. Seán Moynihan:

If I may just come in there for a second because loneliness has come up a few times. It has in been several programmes for Government. As an agency that has campaigned and run the loneliness task force and also runs the loneliness network, the challenge there is that we have no strategy or plan. The danger is that these things get developed in substitute for the plan we have. If we do not have a plan, that is what will happen. The Deputy used the phrase "market-driven". The point is, if we do not have a strategy around how we combat loneliness - and research shows it is higher in younger people than it actually is in older people - it is an emotional connection and it will damage your physical and mental health far more than an awful lot of people think. We can provide evidence of that. In the absence of a strategy, this is what is going to happen. Similarly with all AI tools, if we do not have a strategy or a plan, we will go wherever we are led by multinationals, etc., though that does not mean they are all good or bad. We have examples of this already. An awful lot of healthcare has been privatised. I am not saying that is a good or a bad thing but it was not a policy decision. There is no evidence of what was good about it or what the pros and cons were of using the private sector for this compared to social care. There is no policy on it; it just happened. We have a huge number of services to older that are completely privatised without anybody looking at it and asking what are the pros and cons. That is the danger here. With no loneliness strategy, what will happen is, if there is a demand for a service here because of the levels of loneliness, ultimately the vacuum will be filled and we will have no control.