Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

I thank the witnesses for being here today. First, I acknowledge the work of Senator Clonan in this area of personalised budgets and how much this relates to affording autonomy to disabled citizens and how important that is.

I wonder if the witnesses could give me a sense of how personalised budgets are worked out in practice, how much variability there might be from one person to the next in the budget allocated, what level of assessment is required to establish the budget that a person needs and how we can ensure that assessment process is not overly bureaucratic.