Ms Laura Casey:

I thank the Deputy. The intention behind the reporting provisions in the legislation is to collect quite baseline data in some ways. There is very little data on the nursing home sector. This really does create impediments to being able to properly plan service delivery throughout the sector. The types of data we hope to collect are still under consideration. They will be set out in regulation. We have had engagement on the types of data with HIQA and the HSE and we also hope to engage with the sector. We hope it can be quite a user-friendly approach to collect some very basic data. We have information on nursing home support scheme clients but regarding the sector as a whole and being able to disaggregate on a regional basis, we have no profile of residents or staffing in nursing homes. We do not know a lot about bed occupancy levels or the types of beds. Some of it is what I term "baseline data" to help inform policymaking and projections.