Mr. Andy Heffernan:

I will address the question of Sláintecare and national programmes. I was at a round-table discussion with the CEO of the HSE in the last few months and one of the questions I asked centred on national programmes vis-à-visautonomy at a regional level. I asked whether there was a fear or risk that some of the programmes may be diluted because someone in a particular CHO sees the primary objective or focus being on something other than dementia or whether the national programmes would still apply at the regional level. The approach to the allocation of home care, for example, has always been highly fragmented across the different CHOs and I would imagine my colleagues in Family Carers Ireland have a view on that too. We operate across the seven CHOs and the allocation of what we provide in tandem with the HSE can be very CHO-specific. We would be looking for a fairly significant clarification of the definition of the services because the nature of our home care is very different-----