Ms Carol Grogan:

We continued to inspect throughout Covid bar a couple of weeks in the beginning where we needed to upskill our own staff in terms of Covid, personal protective equipment, PPE, and the requirements for going out on inspection.

Mr. Colfer identified that providers implemented remote oversight, so providers remotely monitored their own services and relied on information gained through audits or telephone calls with the centres. We have learned from that that remote oversight does not work from a provider's perspective. No more than us going out and seeing first-hand the lived experience of how people are experiencing care, providers need to be out in their own services and this goes for both older persons and disability services. They need to be engaged with their staff. They need to support their persons in charge to deliver safe, quality care.

We are working with providers to re-establish proper governance approaches. Both the older persons and disability stakeholder events this year are focused on governance and management. We held webinars in disability services for persons in charge and persons participating in management. Just recently we had more than 1,700 attendees focusing on governance and management. We are developing a seminar with the umbrella bodies for disability to launch later this year and a main event next year which focuses on their responsibilities as a board and CEOs of these services in terms of accountability, responsibility and the governance management of services.