Mr. Tadhg Daly:

The Deputy has raised a couple of points. Clearly, what we need to develop as a society is a continuum of care for older people. We always get caught up in the silos of home care, acute care, and housing with supports. We need to develop a continuum of care. There is a legitimate question on what we term the future viability of some homes, in particular smaller homes. We are very concerned about this with regard to maintaining service continuity. We have an ageing population and an increasing ageing demographic. It is also important to say the age profile of nursing homes is primarily over 80 and over 85.