Mr. Phelim Quinn:

No. A significant number of the inspectors have been recruited and will be in place at the end of October or mid-November at the earliest. We are recruiting additional staff and are confident that we have planned well for this. There has been some slippage, but we have looked at how we will deal with this in terms of contingency planning.

We have also, as part of this new function, looked at issues around support for our staff in discharging their functions. On Monday of next week we will launch a new methodological approach to our inspection process, called the authority monitoring approach. This will enable a consistent approach by all of our inspectors across all of the services we will be regulating. This will apply to health and social care services for adult and children.

Next Monday we will also launch a new ICT system which will help us to be more efficient in how we assimilate information and produce reports. This is about the modernisation of our approach to regulation.

Deputy Kelleher referred to residential centres as residents' homes. We acknowledge that this is the case, given that many are residing therein on a long-term basis. In this regard, our approach to regulation will be person-centred and rights-based. We are speaking, in terms of these being older persons' services and disability services, about some of the most vulnerable people in our society. That we are regulating these services acknowledges the vulnerability and protection issues involved. I draw members' attention to the fact that one of our core corporate objectives is to safeguard the rights of individuals using our services. I also draw their attention to our strong focus on improvement. While in the past there have been many headlines on the closure of and sanctions placed on homes for older and dependent persons, in this instance we need to take a balanced approach and look at what we can do by way of regulatory intervention to help improve services before they reach the end point of closure. Our focus in the course of the next few years will be on improvement, always bearing in mind that we can apply sanctions.

I hope I have responded to all of members' questions.