Ms Mary O'Kelly:

As we said earlier, we are in a really competitive environment internally in that we have opened our additional services across the CHO area for CAMHS. The team in Linn Dara works very hard and, as I said, forecast on a nine- to 12-week basis, but it has been very difficult to recruit in recent years. We have never achieved full recruitment to the 50-plus posts. We do have a combination of strategies in place, including agency work. Recruitment has become particularly difficult in a very short time span over recent weeks due to a number of factors, including, as I said, competition from other providers. We try, where possible, to stick to the same cohort of procured nurses, that is, the same agency, because they have built up an expertise. That agency has also found it difficult to recruit, which has not happened to us before. Borders have opened, so people have resigned and left. We also had some sick leave. It has been a perfect storm in recent weeks; hence our present position. It is not a decision we took lightly, but we had to look at the skill mix on the ward and in the units, and we were in such a position that we could not, unless we took this action, guarantee safe, quality care for the service users of the unit.