Ms Aoife Bairéad:

We need long-term funding that allows us to actually plan and support services and ourselves well. We must be able to compete with the HSE and other Departments in terms of staff. We want to be able to recruit the best people who can do those jobs who through their experience in life and work and education can come to that role and offer the best that the community deserves. Our funding, as I said when I outlined it, is so stark compared to the funding within health more broadly. Task forces are not unique in that. Many community services have experienced the same issues.

Given the cost of living, inflation, the cost of renting properties and all of the pieces that affect us, it is a huge task to try to keep our services running and, literally, to keep the lights on in some of our buildings. We asked for an analysis to be commissioned to look at the structural disadvantages that local task force areas face to inform the funding and resourcing of the proposed plans. Doing it based on the population simply will not meet the needs of the people we work with. These issues are not just faced by new communities; they are faced by communities that have been there for a very long time as well. The situation is complex and therefore the approach should be nuanced. I struggle with the idea that elegant siloed approaches to funding could somehow work with the complexities and realities of people's lives. It has never worked. I grew up in these areas. I have lived and worked in these areas. It seems impossible that we are still at this. We need to recognise the complexity of what we are actually doing.