Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

There are some areas where one cannot control costs or it is difficult to do so. The most difficult is 24-7 services. Unfortunately, in areas like home support, we can live within an overall budget. We may not like the consequences of that, though. We have more than €445 million. That is what we are seeking to spend and we are trying to get the best value out of it. We could spend a further €10 million, €50 million or €100 million and would like to do so, but there is a separate question of whether we could gear up sufficient staff for home support services.

More investment in some areas would be useful. A part of the reason we are trying to live within the budget is to get external credibility with our funders, as well as their trust and confidence, so that they will be happy to invest more. There is €150 million more being spent on home support than there was three or four years ago. That is not insubstantial. We would use more, of course.