Mr. Tadhg Daly:

Nurses are in scarce supply across the world due to the high demand. Even in recent days, I heard colleagues outlining the challenges when an outbreak occurs and a large number of staff are out sick due to Covid. Nursing is the single biggest issue. That is why we as an organisation engaged last year in a workforce plan. We will engage with the Department of Health on that. We must have a workforce plan for the entire health and social care service. People spoke earlier about increased home care, for example. Even if we have all the additional home care hours, we need the staff to be able to do that, both in terms of nurses and carers. The situation is still very challenging but that is something we collectively need to address.