Mr. Richard Flaherty:

On that point, one of the issues we have in our centres is that we are so closely aligned to the hospital with the critical referral pathways for patients, people think we are part of the HSE. They sometimes do not feel they need to fund for us. That perception is a challenge for us but we are community-based and reliant on fundraising.

Yes, fundraising on the ground is a challenge because there are many great causes out there. We all acknowledge that we are a long time providing these services and we are a long time fundraising. We have not come in looking for 100% funding, and we are delighted that the hospice are getting 100% funding. We know we will need to cover some of our budget through community fundraising and we are happy to do that, but we need a core base for each centre to be able to know that we at least have that much coming through and we can make up the gap. Now, the gap we need to fill through fundraising is too big to be sustainable into the future.