Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

I did a bit of digging into figures recently, and in a nine-month period between 2024 and this year, the Department spent €12.5 million on outsourced AONs. That, incredibly, equates to the starting salary of an occupational therapist for 290 years. The starting salary is around €43,500. The real worry I have is that the Government is actually hollowing out public services at the same time as it is bundling huge amounts into a sort of dead end, because even if someone gets an assessment of need, it does not necessarily lead anywhere if there are no interventions in place. I would like the Minister to take that on board.

I want to come back to the private for-profit residential services that some of my colleagues mentioned and Deputy Ó Murchú's comments on the need for a long-term plan to know where we are going with this. Through a parliamentary question reply, I identified a near doubling of proportion of spend on private for-profit residential services for intellectual disability. I welcome very much the budget increase for disability services, but we really need to look carefully at where that is being spent. What tends to be the nature of a contract for a residential placement with, for instance, Nua Healthcare or Talbot Group or Haven Living? Does the Department tend to sign up year by year or is it a long-term contract? Can the Minister give a comparison on cost per placement between a private for-profit residential placement versus a section 38 or section 39 residential placement? What is the general cost difference?