Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is one of the top priority areas in the winter plan. As the Deputy quite rightly says, the level of delayed discharge from care is far too high. One of the ways to deal with that is to discharge patients to community nursing homes, in the case of more complex needs, or to private nursing homes. As the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, has said, some hospitals do this very well. However, other hospitals do not. This is partly down to a variance in operational effectiveness on the ground. As I have said, some hospitals are very good at it. They have very good relationships with the community and with the nursing homes. Other hospitals do not have as good relationships. It is a priority area for the HSE in the context of the winter plan.