Mr. John Dunne:

I do not think the tender is particularly relevant to the questions the Chairman asks. The tender is a way for the HSE to pull in supplementary flexible support for a service that is mainly delivering itself. That is how I would describe it. There are huge variations geographically around the country. In some parts of the country the HSE employs thousands of home care workers itself and provides most of the service and only fills in the edges. In other parts of the country the history is one of outsourcing, so there is flexibility. To respond to the questions the Chairman asked, an application process has been just put in place, and the interesting thing is that the application must be made by the person needing the home care. It is not made by a family member, the public health nurse or the hospital. I do not know how this will work. It is in its very early stages.

As for the assessment, again, the Chairman is probably better equipped to probe this, but my understanding is that the care needs assessment is carried out in two phases. There is a clinical and social care assessment.