Mr. Bernard Gloster:

The position on Benefacts is that it had been providing a service of collating a lot of data relating to various community and voluntary sector providers - not just Tusla - that had lots of relationships with the State. As that moved on over the years and organisations started to develop their own different data sets, there was a question as to the continuity of that. It had been funded centrally. We certainly expressed a view on the positive dimensions that Benefacts continued to offer. If it was going to change, we were anxious to see whether there was a possibility that State agencies outside the previous Department of Public Expenditure and Reform model could look at retaining Benefacts. In fact, I corresponded in detail with my colleague, Mr. Paul Reid, the CEO of the HSE, at the time. I do not know whether it was a confluence of factors, such as Covid and other things, but it took some time. The HSE decided that it really was not within its ability to continue it. It was interested in taking over the Benefacts data but not necessarily continuing the Benefacts service. We would not have been able to sustain retaining Benefacts in our own right just for ourselves. The cost would have been in excess of €1 million. It was originally not set up as specific to Tusla at all.