Mr. Gerard O'Brien:

We are not to the best of my knowledge. Having said that, Dr. Lajoie and I work for MABS Support and there are ten MABS companies. There is our company, National Traveller MABS and eight regional companies. They take in north and south Leinster, north and south Munster, south Connacht, north Connacht and Ulster and then Dublin, which unlike the GAA is split in half along north and south. I am not sure if regional managers have been approached but I suppose it has only been recently announced. That may be the case and I am just not aware of it. It is certainly something I am sure is relevant to MABS and the Citizens Information Board because we have a social policy function.

Dr. Lajoie has only just joined us and we are delighted about it because we now have a specialist on social policy working with us in MABS Support. Dr. Lajoie's providing of social policy is a dedicated function in MABS Support for the whole of the MABS service. We also have a new financial inclusion executive and this role was in a previous iteration of MABS Support called MABS National Development. Anyway, it is the same crew and we have a guy called Mr. Joe Nevin who worked as a money adviser in Sligo MABS for approximately 13 years before he was paroled to us. Mr. Nevin and Dr. Lajoie started in November.

As I said, we have the MABS services in regional companies and the National Traveller MABS, and these are rooted in communities. We have issues that are coming up there and Dr. Lajoie has mentioned some of these, including the COPD case. We also have a "macro" view, for want of a better word, and we can channel those matters coming up through this funnel beside me. I've insulted her before and that is just another example of it. We are in a very good position now and if we are asked, we would like to contribute.