Professor Kathleen Lynch:

To follow on the comments, I have some things to say about care. There is one aspect I find it very strange. We have primary schools and secondary schools and we do not ask them to tender every year for their schools. Why is a fundamental service, like the care of children or the care of older people always put out to tender? Why has it been made such a product? This is what it is made into when it is put out to tender. This is what I said in my presentation. I believe that we need a national care planning unit. With regard to how and where it is put, I suggest it go into the Department of Children. Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, but maybe it would be more appropriate to be somewhere else or in all Government Departments. It is extraordinary that we know we need to care for vulnerable people, people with high dependency needs, both in youth and old age, and we do not treat it as a generic, core function of the State.