Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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I welcome Mr. Gloster and his team to the committee. An article appeared on Monday, 27 September, in the Irish Examinerwhere Mr. Gloster spoke at length in respect of private provision of residential care. The article stated:

Mr Gloster said that many private care placements were working well but added: “The bigger risk of that level of dependency on private care is private operators can leave the market; they can leave quickly, they can sell on; company structures can become very complex, and the reality is that if you have a private provider in a house with four young people, if that private provider left the market, the State has only one option and that is for us to take over that provision there”.

Is there a shift in policy in Tusla such that it is going to wind down private care providers? Is that a signalling of a policy shift? What is the real-time position in respect of that? The witnesses might bear in mind that I have ten minutes and there are four questions I would like to ask.