Mr. Sean Garvey:

I will come in on two points. With regard to unannounced visits, we carried out three such visits in 2019. As Mr. Tyndall said, we were not able to undertake any in 2020. We were only able to make one visit in total due to the travel restrictions. We did three unannounced visits in 2019 and, as Mr. Tyndall said, we found a mixed bag. The main purpose of our visits is to talk to residents. If we do not say we are coming, the residents will not know we are coming and we are therefore less likely to meet as many as we otherwise would. On the other hand, there can be issues. I am thinking of particular cases with which we have dealt. Different versions of events are presented to us with regard to how things are being done or things that are happening in centres that are impossible to resolve by way of desktop examination. One person may tell us one thing while somebody else may see something else. We have found that it can be best to go and see for ourselves. We did that three times and we were satisfied that what we saw when we showed up was the way things actually were and we were able to progress issues on that basis.

In 2020, we were not able to visit and received complaints about inaction in addressing Covid issues in centres. These included issues regarding whether there were adequate social distancing measures or whether adequate masks, facilities for social hygiene or sanitation were being provided. We simply were not in a position to form a view as to whether centres were doing that type of thing reasonably because we could not see for ourselves. An unannounced visit would be of most use in such scenarios. We could show up and see how things actually are.

Another complaint received from a resident in 2020, when we could not visit, related to the quality and breadth of produce in the residents' shop in the centre. Again, we could not verify that without showing up to see how things were. These are the types of scenario in which unannounced visits are beneficial. However, overall we find that we get a much higher level of engagement if we engage with residents in advance so that they know we are coming. For example, because the one visit we did undertake in 2020 had to be carried out in the context of Covid, we had individual appointments with people rather than us turning up and holding an initial communal meeting with residents followed by individual one-on-one meetings with people. We could not proceed with the communal meetings so we met with people by way of a sequence of appointments. Every appointment was booked which demonstrates that people had a desire to come and see us. In a nutshell, we found unannounced visits useful where issues cannot appropriately be resolved by a desktop examination but we did not find them useful for getting a high level of engagement from residents.