Mr. Niall Redmond:

I thank the Chair. I hope he can hear me now.

On the Chair’s contribution on clinical governance, it is important to reflect on the fact that HIQA has a substantial number of powers available to it at the moment in terms of clinical governance. Dr. MacLellan has outlined some of the work we will be doing over the next while, to which HIQA will be central. Aside from that, there are a number of other streams of work under way as well as part of that overall package and framework of clinical governance. Important in that is the work the Department has been doing over the past 12 months on an adult safeguarding policy for the health sector which would be the first national safeguarding policy for the health sector. That would have within its scope private and public facilities and nursing homes. That work is advancing this year with a view to going out to public consultation on a draft policy later this year or early 2021. That will be another important aspect of the clinical governance framework.

In the programme for Government, there is also a commitment to exploring the expansion of the role of the ombudsman to examine individual care concerns in relation to nursing homes. That will be another important aspect of that framework. I do not think there is one particular silver bullet. A package of measures is required to put together a robust framework around that.

The role of advocacy cannot be understated. We are doing some work around the programme for Government commitment to the roll-out of the patient advocacy service into the community, which will be another important aspect of the response.