Mr. Mattie Quinn:

I will take the questions in reverse order. The Topping Trust is a trust fund set up by a lady called Mrs. Nora Topping. She donated money because she wanted to enhance the quality of life of older people in the nursing home and in the community. She wanted to get people out of this dark, dreary and dull building and into a bright, modern, well-lit and well-facilitated place. That was her aim. As the Chairman has said, most people are trying to get out of this type of thing but, in this case, they are being put into such a unit.

On the second question, on how HIQA got involved, HIQA does inspections from time to time and had done a number of inspections at this site. It seems that in one of those inspections, it came up that it wanted this space done. What is unusual about this is that the regulation regarding the 4 sq. m per person was initiated on 1 July 2016 but it was not until 2019 that HIQA wanted to do anything about it. The second thing is that, as Deputy Canney has said, the decision to close the facility was made before Covid had even been heard of. The question was what was to be done with the people in it and how could they be got out. Lo and behold, Covid worked wonders. It solved all of the problems, just as it did in St. Brigid's. However, a lot of this is a mystery.