Professor Cecily Kelleher:

The committee has heard from HIQA, which is the regulatory authority. It does periodic inspections and those reports are all available to us. They cover areas relating to governance, staffing, management and infection prevention and control. The committee will be aware, from its evidence, that it necessarily suspended those inspections for public health reasons at the outset of this in March, and it recommenced them around the time of the preparation of our own report. We are forward looking in our recommendations, and we have made some clear recommendations to HIQA to strengthen those regulatory inspections, particularly around infection prevention and control. We have set out a number of those in our report. I draw the Deputy's attention to one specific recommendation we have made in regard to an audit of staff in current homes, which we think is a very important piece of work. We have also placed emphasis on staffing provision and how that might be put in place.