Ms Laura Casey:

HIQA's current enforcement provisions are "hammeresque", as it were, and are mostly concerned with restrictions, in that HIQA places conditions on and restricts a nursing home provider's business in some way or cancels a registration. What we are proposing in this Bill is focused on affirmative actions. HIQA will be able to issue a notice - in some ways, it could be called a warning notice - where it believes there is non-compliance. It will set out clearly within that notice where the non-compliance arises and how it believes that non-compliance can be rectified, and it will give the provider a specific timeline to come back into compliance. This legislation is much more focused on positive action to remedy non-compliance as opposed to attaching restrictive conditions or cancelling registrations. It is a different side of the coin compared with the current provisions. HIQA has been vocal in calling for a graduated set of powers. These are generally the types of provision that are given to regulators in other areas and we have tried to draw on practice in other areas to inform the proposals.