Mr. Joe Ryan:

We will always act as best we can in the best interest of any patient or service user within the timing available to us. The clinical design of any facility is paramount. The difficult decision relating to Owenacurra is that we have to start somewhere. We have to start to make that move. To invest further in the building, clearly we have to rely on the experts. Our estates department is populated with architectural engineering surveying expertise, and when it does not have enough of that, it will bring it in. We will always look at best practice in respect of the facilities. We looked at the Owenacurra building and to keep investing in what was a prefabricated 1970s structure would not have been a good longer term use of public money, investing and getting the right answer. We have to make that difficult decision to ask people to move out of the facility to allow us to reinvest in it. In each individual case, we did our best to find the most appropriate available accommodation. It is not a case of who wins. We have to make difficult decisions sometimes to get a longer term benefit by having a better service. We are constantly trying to invest in building better services. We are not taking away things just for the sake of it. It is about getting to a point. In an ideal case, we would be able to build something right beside it and then move everybody when it is ready. That would be assuming that is the model of care. The new model of care is a different one and, therefore, the facility needs to be fit for that purpose.