In the past hour I came away from a meeting of the committee on social protection and rural affairs. There was a considerable, interesting discussion on Citizens Information and Money Advice and Budgeting services. One of the things that struck me was 20% of people cannot get access to those services. There are 89 centres nationally and about 140 information officers. That equates to about 1.5 staff officers per centre. The people who are especially affected are those with literacy and digital difficulties and other vulnerable groups who rely on a face-to-face intervention or a meeting. The plea to us on the committee was about staffing. That was the issue, and staffing is funding. What would more staffing do? It would increase face-to-face delivery-----

The Taoiseach to respond.

Obviously I did not attend the committee and am not aware of the full details that ensued but if you were to look at every agency in the country and back at where staffing was three or four years ago - it may not be the case here and I put that reservation or qualification in - there has been an increase generally. Numbers in the public service have risen very considerably. We are going to have to look at methodologies, how we do our business and how we do our work. MABS is a very important service and I am very supportive of it but I am very conscious our public expenditure growth is up to 8% per annum, which is quite significant. We have good, robust public finances and we are being criticised for spending too much by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council and others and some economists worry about that too, so we need balance here. At a time when we are increasing services and increasing numbers, we need to keep a weather eye on outputs, whether we are doing things in the optimal way and whether we can do things more effectively. I make those points generally and without prejudice to the individual case.