Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

The Deputy also asked about home support and personal assistants. Next year's budget will provide €5 million to enable the delivery of approximately 150,000 additional personal assistant and home support hours. I echo what the Minister said in particular about digitalisation. Immediately previous to this post, I was the Minister of State with responsibility for digitalisation across government, and this is something I am very keen to drive. I am very encouraged to hear there will be new IT systems and dashboards in development in the Department and that we will be looking to work with all the section 38 and section 39 organisations we support to move from paper-based systems to more automated and digitalised systems where appropriate.