Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Once a period of eight weeks has elapsed from the announcement of new funding for the fair deal scheme, we believe the new moves will have a measurable impact on delayed discharges in acute hospitals. It was precisely the tapering upwards of the waiting periods for the fair deal scheme that could be correlated against the increase in the number of delayed discharges and the number of people on trolleys. An additional effect is that when there is no outlet to the fair deal scheme because of an absence of funding, the step-down or transitional care beds that many of the hospitals have access to are utilised by people who are waiting for the fair deal scheme. They would normally be turned over multiple times in an eight-week period, enabling staged discharge from the acute hospitals.

In our assessment, the core issue is the fact that the waiting time for a bed under the fair deal scheme headed out beyond 16 weeks at the end of last year, and if that situation had continued it would have reached about 20 weeks by this time, so the additional funding for the fair deal scheme, which amounts to €44 million, enables us to bring the waiting period down to four weeks and keep it at that point. Due to the numbers waiting and the pace at which people can be discharged and admitted into nursing homes, we see it as an eight-week process before the full effect of the new funding is experienced.