Mr. Barry Kehoe:

Yes, there is a cohort of social workers across the service and across the sectors, be it age friendly or housing. In Westmeath, we had a social worker in the past. We have a difficulty in recruiting social workers at present. They just do not appear to be there when we go to recruit them. We have struggled with this across the sector, with the supply. We speak of those supports but we provide them through other staff that we have, who bring a certain set of skills. They are not necessarily qualified social workers, but they are trained and experienced in dealing with the age-friendly forum and the issues that arise there. In our housing staff, there is a wide breadth of experience. We work with all the other agencies as well in giving support to people, particularly homeless people. We also have our estate housing liaison officers, who work very closely with people in social housing across our counties, helping them and helping the estates to work well. They also help residents' associations in bringing community cohesion to those areas. We provide services with a wide range of personnel but unfortunately, in the more rural local authorities, we do not have that many social workers.