Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister. I completely understand the issue of respite. I am fully supportive of everything the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, has just said.

The issue of capital is one of my biggest bugbears. The gathering of data within the Department of Health, as part of the transfer of functions, was very difficult. One of my officials might disagree with that. One of the hardest pieces was to understand how and where the money was spent, and the grey areas within that. Capital was one of those pieces.

I will explain one thing which frustrates me greatly. When one has a fantastic capital budget, such as €22 million, which is a serious uplift on what the previous budget was in the Department of Health, not one penny of that budget should be left behind unless one is underperforming in any quarter on one’s key performance indicators. Unfortunately, the way the HSE has worked to date is that it nearly directs its funding to the back end of the year rather than the front end. It does not front-load its capital piece but leaves all of this money at the back end. By the time one reaches the end of the year and the shovel-ready projects, where one has been missing one’s target beyond the three months or the six months, that money cannot be turned around quickly enough. One loses it and it goes back into the overall piece again to be restarted. People do not understand that well enough. That is how capital has worked in the past.

My senior officials agree with me. We need to change that piece. From talking with my assistant secretary, Mr. Ó Conaill, it is one of the pieces we wish to change in how we approach capital spending within this Department. We are not spending the money we are being allocated. I am not talking about this Department, which will spend every last penny of it. In the past, however, we have not. It is our ambition to spend it all, but it cannot all be projects that are earmarked as projects for design or those at appraisal stages. What we need are shovel-ready projects.

Every one of the members has spoken about children who need intervention and about respite houses and residential homes. We need to ensure that there are enough centres of excellence used around the country and that we can access that funding to support the likes of Rainbows Ireland, which can support 1,100 kids on a weekly basis, or the neurodiversity groups in Dublin. It is no different from what I have seen in Liskennett on the Limerick-Cork border. We have really good projects that need to be stepped up. There is an exciting one under commission in Deputy Moynihan's own area in Kanturk at the moment. Those projects are being done but at the same time, they need to be funded so that children under the school summer programme have access to these services. We need to have deliverables and not just be aspirational. I am very happy with the support the Minister and I have received for our collaboration. My plan is that when the HSE runs under on its capital spend on a monthly basis, that money will go to a shovel-ready project that is ready to turn around and make operational before the end of the year.