Martin Daly presses minister on agency costs and respite places

I just have a couple of questions to ask, Minister. Just on the agency staff costs, that sort of caught my eye. I suppose I have a view on agency. I think we should be planning for a more permanent service, permanent staff, trying to recruit and retain staff in our service to build up that continuity of care, and also the cost of agency staff as well. And that's no disrespect to individual agency staff who do a good job and are needed. No, absolutely, Deputy, and I don't at all disagree with you. As you've seen from the figures, 54 million. Now, I will say that there is an agency conversion proposal being discussed with Deeper at this point in time. I think that would serve us well. Look, there are extraordinary demands in terms of, you know, safe level of staffing, HICWA standards, complex cases, as I referenced earlier, some of them requiring 24-hour care or whatever. But, look, we are determined to do better in this space going forward, and I'm hopeful of, you know, maybe those conversion opportunities with the support of Deeper. Yeah, because it seems that we're not spending our money on recruitment. We're not recruiting staff, and so there's an underspend on permanent staff. That's what it would appear from the figures. But just, I suppose, finally, the underspend piece on the mother and baby institution payment scheme, would you be able to make comment on that? Yeah, thanks very much, Deputy. Just in relation to that, that actually comes from, I would say, yesterday. Just very quickly, I will say to you, the uptake hasn't been at the numbers that we anticipated in the early years, but there is until March of 2029 for people to come forward. We are doing huge, huge campaigns around advertising and promotion to encourage people to come forward. We want people to come forward and to draw down what is their due, and we will continue to advocate in that space as well. It just caught my eye on the issue there. Yeah, yeah, no, no, absolutely. Thank you for branching that. I know that, Minister Regans, you talked about the expansion of places, 1,400 additional places for respite next year, isn't it, under the new funding. I suppose the reflection, again, is one of the big challenges going forward, the transition from secondary education into beyond education, how we manage that, and also the transition for older parents, and I've said this before, and who are looking towards the end of their lives and really worried about what's going to happen to their offspring who will need full-time care. Yeah, yeah. And again, I agree with you. There is an emphasis in provisions being made in Budget 26 in terms of planned resourcing. Obviously, I think we know at a very early stage that a person who has been cared for at home, and it often gets to a crisis point when the parent is 80 or 90 or whatever, because they want to keep their child or their young person at home. But we are putting particular emphasis on, as we mentioned earlier, in terms of residential. We have a capital fund, a significant one of £43 million, which is actually a 60% increase on previous years. Also working from a housing point of view with the Department of Housing in terms of what they can produce for us, and just ensuring that we have the places in place on time for those who need them, and that there's earlier and earlier starts to do that. Now, I will say we're coming from a low base there, so it's going to take us quite an amount of time. But we did launch the strategy there just not too long ago in terms of the National Human Rights Strategy for Disabled People. All of that is in it. We've given a commitment over the lifetime of government to take the steps that are necessary, and I think the budgetary funding that we're receiving, particularly for 26, will help us along that way. Thanks very much. Thanks very much.