Ms Sandra Tuohy:

We obviously had a large waiting list when we were most recently before this committee. It is now down to 4,550 people awaiting home support across the country. That figure is from July.

We have been working really hard to reduce that even further. We hope to have the August figures very shortly and we also hope that these will show a reduction in the number of people awaiting home support in the community. We hope to reduce the list of those waiting for home support to a very small number, if not to get rid of it entirely towards the end of October, because we recognise that is one of the fundamental ways of keeping people at home, keeping them safe and avoiding hospital admissions where we can.