Mr. P?draig Mallon:

To add to Ms Haight's point and to answer Deputy Canney's point on measurement, we believe very strongly in measuring and evidencing our work.

It is really important when working with a new model that we understand the value we are creating for the people who are availing of the services. We recently undertook a social return on investment initiative, a valuation of four of our key services. As we said in the opening statement, that captured from the service users themselves what value the services were delivering for them. The value they attached to the services they are receiving from the Crann Centre is four times what it costs us to deliver those services. For every €1 we spend they get €4 in value. That sort of fiscal-based evidence hopefully points to a situation where you are not just looking at the qualitative aspects of the improvements in terms of life improvements and health and well-being improvements. We are really focused on measuring that too, and that is why social return on investment analysis is a very effective tool. It asks the stakeholders what value they would put on the service if it was not available and they had to pay for it. We are talking about thousands of euro in value for services we would offer, which could be an opportunity to meet with peers. For families, children and adults, our service provides the opportunity to come together. Isolation is one of the key issues for people with a disability. The value they would place on that would be upwards of about €6,000 for a programme that enables them to come together and meet with their families. We feel very confident that we are able to track and show clear evidence that there is a return on investment by philanthropy or the State. I think that is rooted in Deputy Canney's question as to how we know that approaches are working and how we can prove that we are delivering value for the funds coming in.

Social return on investment is one tool among others, but it happens to be quite effective in hearing the voice of the stakeholder and understanding the value to them. There is no point in delivering services if they do not ultimately deliver value for the person who receives those services. Not alone is it important to deliver good outcomes but it is also important to be able to evidence for them as well. That is why the 2Gen approach and the methodology established over ten years through Aspen and Ascend is attractive to us, because it gives us a strategic framework in which to deliver great services but also commitment to measuring and evidencing.