Mr. Phelim Quinn:

Colleagues are sitting in front of me here. In agreement with the Department of Health we developed a strategic workforce plan earlier this year. That workforce plan clearly articulates some of the areas of risk we currently carry in regard to the discharge of our current functions as well as some of the resource requirements we have for planned future functions of the authority. As an example, one of the critical issues for us in terms of risk is the significant increase that there has been in recent years in the number of designated centres for people with disability. There is a policy within Ireland around the decongregation or resettlement of people who have been living in large congregated settings to move into more integrated community settings, and that has happened. It has happened both as a result of the policy but I also believe it has happened as a result of the interventions HIQA has made regarding both the nature and culture of some of the services we have been in. The outcome of some of that work has been an increase of somewhere in the region of 200 new designated centres that we are not necessarily staffed for. On top of that, some of the well articulated risks we have identified within some of those services means that our inspection volumes have to increase, but we have not had the commensurate increase in staff. That is reflected in that workforce plan.