Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Integration is not fundamentally the issue. The number was 649 a couple of months ago. I suspect it will be approximately 540 when the weekly census is published today. At any point in time, a number of people will be in this category. That number is too high. Sometimes we hear the argument that it would be better if this were controlled from hospitals or from the community. The net problem is that regardless of who is in control, there are limits on total supply and total capacity. It is for that reason I mentioned in my opening remarks the issue of making non-fair deal as demand-led as fair deal is. If the hospitals controlled it, they would ultimately have exactly the same capacity and the same budget that the communities have now. I would be concerned that this would turn the hospitals into magnets for access to home care. In the past, for various reasons we have sought to prioritise egress from hospitals. This has had the effect of leading to blockages in the community. This has meant that the route to get to home care has been through the hospital. This has had a perverse effect.