Professor Cecily Kelleher:

I will first respond to the Deputy’s earlier point. We fully endorse what she is saying about taking an inter-sectoral approach to doing this. We have set out a number of the statutory care supports for older people. We are as concerned as the Deputy and others are to ensure this sector is protected into the winter. We have been giving very clear direction on this since we produced our report and we have had a positive response from the Minister. He has communicated very clearly to HIQA, the HSE and Nursing Homes Ireland that we need to be in implementation mode. It is very clear that from the core threat of Covid-19, we need to ensure the Covid-19 teams are stood up, are working, are supporting the individual nursing homes and have the preparedness and resources in place. We have set out a whole range of those resources. We want to ensure this happens.