Ms Sarah Cooney:

On the Wasted Lives report, as Mr. Tyndall said both the Department of Health and the HSE have accepted all of the recommendations in it. On practical implementation, a steering group has been set up under the chief operations officer in the HSE, Ms Anne O’Connor, which is a key example of how seriously it takes this issue. The HSE has also got funding through the EU to develop the audit of services and people in the settings under 65 to set out their will and preference and to be able to develop and put in place the supports that are needed to allow them to move, if it is their will and preference, to a community setting. We are waiting for the agreement of the national service plan, NSP, for 2022 to get an exact sense of how the pilot that was put in place and that helped to move 18 people out of such settings this year, will be scaled up next year. Our hope is that it will be scaled up substantially in order to move this area on at the pace that is needed. There is movement and we are happy to work with the HSE’s steering group and the action plan it is developing to ensure it is monitored and to ensure that the recommendations are implemented as quickly as possible.

As Mr. Tyndall said, we were recently in the National Rehabilitation Hospital. It was important for us to get a sense of the impact the report had for people working on the ground and to hear of some of the frustrations that those people would have. The idea that this pilot might be scaled out and that there will be the supports put in place for people is important for people working in the field.