Mr. Stephen Boyle:

I wish to touch on the Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m first. The current structure in funding is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Deputy mentioned getaways and so on. We are guided by the New Directions policy, which is about community inclusion. When one thinks of the community, much of the good stuff is happening at weekends and in the evenings. We rely on the commitment of staff, who are supposed to give up their time and try to be flexible in their working week, which is not always doable. It comes back to the New Directions policy. In order to do it properly with staffing levels, sometimes you just need it in the day service, and to get into the community and be an active citizen is not always realistic. That is happening weekly. Someone could call in sick or there could be a number of reasons. In order to be fully compliant with the New Directions policy, it is not always doable. Again, it comes back to transport, which was already mentioned. To get into the community, we need transport. We have many day services in rural settings and you are not going to walk to some community events. You are relying on transport unless you live in an urban area where you can walk or there are city buses. However, services are not always reliable.

It is hard to do 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., but staff are doing it as best they can now within the existing measures. Someone else might touch on the CHO restructuring and give us some detail. I know it will be put down into more regional areas. Where we are at the moment is Galway, Roscommon and up to Donegal. Somebody might have more complete information on that to provide to the Deputy.

I echo the points on recruitment and retention and how much time it takes away from service. Trying to concentrate on staffing is taking time away from the people we support.