Mary Ann O'Brien (Independent)

The Minister's final words gave me great comfort, because I feel that if I pass on the correspondence, we can go a little bit further.

The Brothers of Charity is a wonderful organisation and I thank it so much for being in touch but, unfortunately, these little children do not really do well in respite. They normally end up with terrible reflux chest infections and they end up with worse problems than they started with. It sounds great in theory.

Home care is quite simple, even though these children are extremely ill and even though they need to be tube fed. We at the Jack and Jill foundation have proven that it is a fairly simple equation. The foundation would be prepared to extend its care up to six or seven years, but we need that little bit of help with funding, because we believe we can do a good value for money job. I thank the Minister for listening to me and I really would appreciate if the Minister brought it further because this family are in great despair and it is a bad time of the year.