Mr. Muiris O'Connor:

I thank the Deputy for his questions. On the issue he started on of profiling, there is enormous work going on around profiling the demographics of each region so that we understand the nature of the care needs. The thing is that the six regions are rather substantial, so there is work going on at community healthcare network, CHN, level, a more localised level, to understand the specific needs of each locality. By the end of this summer we will have very comprehensive profiles of all of the regions, not just in terms of population demographics, but we are also looking at the health and social care staff across each region. In addition, there are colleagues looking at the infrastructure and facilities in each region. They will be completed towards the end of the summer and in quarter 3 we will make them publicly available. I think we probably need a web resource perhaps with a bit of mapping going on. That might be helpful alongside publications. They are essential across the various work streams that are going on to support regional health areas, RHAs. Ms Treleaven explained how important it would be for allocation of finances in a fair way. The Deputy can see from what Ms O’Neill said that we have experience in handling things such as rurality and deprivation. We will borrow from other Departments where they have invested huge expertise in those areas. It is a big part of our work and we look forward to sharing it as we progress. Quarter 3 will definitely have all of these in the public domain.