Mr. Joe Lynch:

No. The HSE gives us a packet of money and we have to operate the service within that packet. Unfortunately we are caught between a rock and a hard place. The HSE gives us an amount of money and states that we must operate within that amount but HIQA requires us to have a certain ratio of staff to residents and so on. Therein lies the problem. We need to hire staff because we need to operate a safe service but the HSE says it will not give us any more money.

Deputy Mitchell O'Connor asked what the thinking behind that would have been.