Ms Sandra Broderick:

We have 4,780 long-stay beds. These are NHSS beds. We also have 1,711 short-stay beds and 805 rehabilitation beds. It is very important to recognise that in our CNUs we have a mix of short-stay and long-stay beds. The acuity may differ in terms of the needs and profiles of the people we have coming in. This will vary with regard to the staffing ratios we have in the units. It will not be exact throughout the country.

We have started our cost-of-care review. With this we have had to deliver a live bed register. We can go on every day and see what the occupancy is and what the vacancies are in all of our public beds. We can also see where there are temporarily closed beds, beds that are due to open and where beds are closed because of staffing issues and other such issues. The intended outcome of the live bed register is to allow us to performance manage and to have conversations with the local areas about why beds have closed and when they expect them to open. The impact will be that we should start to see a drop in the cost of care. I hope this answers Deputy Burke's question.