Mr. Phelim Quinn:

I thank the Deputy. I will take his question on NPHET. In the early days of our membership of NPHET, there was a broad subject matter base, including issues about planning for the acute sector and learning about the virus from a public health perspective. By early March we had started to raise issues concerning nursing homes.

In the background, my colleagues were liaising on an ongoing and continual basis with our colleagues in the HSE and the Department of Health on working as part of the national effort. Our interventions subsequent to that have proven to be very useful, in the context of multi-agency working, for achieving some of the interventions that are starting to have an impact on controlling and preventing the spread of Covid-19 within the nursing home sector.

On the question about community hospitals, I will pass to my colleague, the chief inspector.