Dr. Suzanne Denieffe:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for those questions. On his question as to whether we explored rental homes and any specific energy issues associated with such homes, we did not. We asked nurses about the types of homes provided but we did not specifically ask whether they were owner-occupied or rented. We also did not ask about delayed diagnoses but one of the things we did ask was whether nurses felt that living in cold homes had an impact on people's physical health. Some 14% of nurses responded that they felt, where people were living in a cold home, that cold home had hastened those people's death. That finding is supported by international evidence. We did a scoping review on the impacts of people living in cold homes and there is a relationship between cold homes and hastened death.