Mr. Chris White:

I thank the Deputy. I will respond a little to his point. We are very keen to work with the HSE. We have a good relationship with it. Ironically, the way we are funded means we currently have nine separate contracts with nine individual community healthcare organisations, CHOs. We have requested on numerous occasions that organisations like Vision Ireland move to one single HSE contract. Unfortunately, even with the RHAs being developed, we will still have six individual contracts that will be individually monitored and administered by the six individual RHAs. There is potential for a further 21 contracts within the individual health areas in each individual RHA.

When there are large organisations, such as Vision Ireland, which are delivering the vast majority of vision rehabilitation services on behalf of the HSE, it is difficult from an administration, funding and organisational perspective to be really attuned to the various needs of the HSE and the needs of people with sight loss.