Professor Cecily Kelleher:

Yes. In terms of our stakeholder consultation, our first ports of call were HIQA, the HSE, Nursing Homes Ireland and all of the stakeholders that have a statutory responsibility in relation to this area. HIQA told us that it had regulatory responsibility and wanted to see a strengthening of its own regulations. We also have made it clear in our recommendations that we both agree with that and want systematic inspections to be undertaken. For instance, we have responsibilities for HIQA in terms of compliance oversight where PPE should be made available, as we have just discussed. In terms of workforce and staffing, recommendation 9.1 in our report is that HIQA should carry out a detailed audit. Recommendation 14.2 in our report referred to a "deficit in infection control and risk management" and suggested "Mandatory training records including infection control should be included consistently". In addition, recommendation 14.5 states that the regulatory assessment should take specific account of "preparedness of designated centres".