Ms Laura Magahy:

We can say that the impact of moving hospital care to community care is this and that we can provide a range of initiatives for that. The piece that is harder to predict is that if we put money into prevention, at what point does it kick in to save a bed? That is harder to predict because sometimes it might have a ten-year impact if a measure is started now. It is also harder to argue for resources for such a measure but that is where we should be trying to make changes. The Deputy mentioned the importance of diet, prevention, exercise and all the usual things and asked if we were doing enough on prevention and dealing with the obesity crisis. There are probably some brave decisions to be made next year on prevention and the budget for health and well-being. These cut across Departments and probably need to be stepped up. That is a harder piece to prove with regard to beds, if I am being honest.