Ms Laura Magahy:

I thank the Deputy for his comments which I will relay to the team and they will be pleased.

The Deputy has asked several questions and I will try to answer them in sequence. We are on track so far but we have an awful lot to do. We are only in year one. It is only 13 months since I sat before the committee without a team and with no staff. We started pulling it together from scratch and working with colleagues in the HSE and the Department. We have put structures in place now so we have a fair wind behind us and I acknowledge the work of my colleagues in the Department and the HSE as a part of that. We are on track so far but we cannot rest on our laurels.

One of the first things that the director general, Paul Reid, asked about when he started was how the HSE was doing and how the board of the HSE, with its new remit and governance structures, was going to interface with the Sláintecare implementation office. There was a genuine acknowledgement on his part and on mine that we need to work seamlessly together. One cannot have one piece of work in the Department and another in the HSE, trying to do things that are not joined at the hip. I am delighted to have agreed with Mr. Sullivan that we are going to have a joint implementation approach to capacity planning, in particular, and the roll-out of the regional integrated health plan. That took a while to work through but is now in place.

The Deputy also asked about the single assessment tool which is critical because it is the basis of the statutory home care scheme. All older people and, eventually, people with a disability will be assessed through the single assessment tool. Their requirements will be looked at and it will form the basis of the statutory home care scheme. I should have alluded to that as another important eligibility entitlement initiative when I was answering questions from Deputy Shortall.

The tool is being piloted at the moment in a few different areas and they are working through how it is happening in practice and talking with the various people on the ground about glitches and improvements that need to be made if there are any. It will be fully rolled out from February onwards. It is a very good thing that is happening.

I agree that the postgraduate medical education strategy is very important. It is joined up. It is being chaired by Mary Doyle, the former Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills, who is a capable and knowledgeable person. I have a meeting with that team this afternoon to see how that is going. It is a very important piece of the jigsaw.

The Deputy may not know that HIQA is organising that a survey for patients will go into nursing homes and that will feed in nicely to seeing what the response is to food and we look forward to seeing the results of that. The Deputy is right that diet is a key part of our health and well-being.

Did I miss any of the questions that the Deputy asked?