Ms Angela Fitzgerald:

My background is in the hospital area and I agree that where people have to wait for excessive periods, the impact on their care, on their families and on their whole experience is far from ideal.

With specific reference to Limerick, I will make a couple of points and then hand over to Mr. Egan. We know, and we called out very clearly in the first report we did in respect of Limerick, the first site inspection, that the hospital failed to comply on all the standards we looked at. We were very strong on the impact the overcrowding was having on the people who were experiencing the service. We did seek to separate that from the hard work that was being done by the front-line staff on the ground.