Ms Susan Cliffe:

I can give the Deputy the numbers that are there today. There are 574 nursing homes in total registered with the chief inspector. Of these, the number of beds in the private nursing homes, which are not necessarily all occupied today, is 25,581, and the number of beds in the HSE facilities is 5,610. There are also 978 beds in what we call the voluntary facilities. These are funded under section 38 or section 39. Again, just to be clear, these are the numbers of beds in the total 574 centres. They may not necessarily all be occupied at the moment but if they were full, that would be the total number of residents.