Mr. John Dunne:

On the conflict of interest issue regarding education, it is early days to see them working through. The VECs offer training at costs we could not possibly match because they have built-in subsidies. There are more egregious examples in the HSE, for example, when it sets a standard in a tender, such as the minimum educational qualification of staff working in a certain area of care. A definite standard is defined and an organisation such as ours spends tens of thousands of euro training our staff up to that level. Then the HSE discovers it cannot get its own staff up to that level and the standard suddenly disappears, leaving the standard lower than it was three years previously.

Another example is where the HSE tenders out services. Its staff deliver five hours of services in the middle of the day while any short periods or anti-social hours in the evenings and at weekends are given to the external bodies. Apart from being a bit unfair to us, it is very unfair to those in receipt of the care because all the medical evidence suggests that continuity of care is better for the person. In giving those examples I do not suggest any badness. The issues are inherent to the system. There should be some sort of control and balance. Where somebody is delivering and purchasing services there is unlikely to be a totally level playing field. The person would be superhuman if he or she achieved that.

I thank the members for their comments on the need to restore the respite care grant. I do not know the answer to Senator Mary Moran's question on school leavers. We have not heard that. We listen to carers. I do not mean that in a smart way. If there is a directive everybody must know about, all I can say for certain is that there are carers who do not know. We will check up on it because if they are entitled to it-----