Dr. Colm O'Reardon:

There is a huge volume of work in all of this area. As the Deputy can understand, people have been working incredibly hard on a whole range of things in the area of nursing home residences. There is a huge volume of work that comes out of the expert panel review. This is one of those things that we look at but - I am sorry for taking up the Chair's time - we expect the NTPF to engage in a commercial way with the commercial nursing homes to drive value for money for the taxpayer. We are broadly satisfied that it is doing that.

If I am permitted one more comment, for all of us to get to a better place on this whole issue, it is important we develop the standardised assessment tool so that we have a better understanding of the level of need in the community and dependency of nursing home residents in whatever setting they are in. That is a fundamental piece of work that we have to do, both in terms of public and private nursing homes and also in terms of the statutory home care scheme. If I was to identify one important piece, I would say that is the thing that will help us to get to a better place in this conversation.