Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 19 September 2019

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

Photo of Alan KellyAlan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour)
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These organisations simply would not be able to operate without these loans. They provide vital services for many people in vulnerable situations. This is a play on language. Everyone in the HSE working in this area knows what is going on. All of the section 38 organisations relying on these loans, and there are many, know they could not operate without them. This is not correct and cannot continue. I would like if this committee could delve further into this issue. We cannot have a situation where all of these organisations - of which there is a huge number are living month to month because of loans being advanced by the HSE because of the funding crisis in the area. As a State, we have outsourced our responsibility to all of these vulnerable groups and people reliant on these section 38 organisations. I suggest that we might put this area into our programme to seek to include more detail than we did previously. When one lifts the bonnet on this, there is a major issue to be dealt with in this area.