Mr. Austin O'Sullivan:

As Deputy Durkan indicated , the State does not have an unlimited of pot of money to spend. The Deputy mentioned that the private sector has come in to take business from the community and volunteer sector. I can talk about our experience in that regard. In our dealings with the HSE, we are not looking for anything extra. We are looking for a better way for funding to be spent. I will give an example. We proposed to the HSE that if it invested €1.2 million in our residential services, we could create €4 million worth of capacity for CHO 7, which spends an average of €16 million each year on essential respite services. The authorities in CHO 7 have told us that they cannot plan for these emergency placements, but they know they will spend an average of €16 million each year. When we came up with a plan that involved the HSE investing €1.5 million with us, thereby enabling us to create €4 million of capacity, the HSE was not interested. Approximately 90% of the €16 million spent by CHO 7 in this area goes to the private sector because the private sector has the resources to invest in buying the properties. It takes six months from the time a property is bought to get HIQA approval to open it as a residential service. The community and voluntary sector is not sitting on resources that would enable it to buy houses to be used six months later.

We believe that with a little bit of planning, money that is already being spent could be spent in a far better way.