Ms Fiona Larthwell:

I think it was Deputy Shortall who asked about the percentage of provision nationally. That is the 63%-37% split between the HSE and non-HSE providers, with the HSE being the smaller part of that. However, that is not even throughout the country. We see in some CHOs - we are still on CHOs as we have not quite got used to the new areas yet - that it is almost entirely private provision, while in other CHOs it is maybe not entirely public provision, but very heavy reliant on public provision.

The ways in which the public and private provision are delivered are a bit different. That is something that is not really addressed through the regulation. What we are talking about with regard to the geographical variation of care is how that follows through in terms of the standards of care that are being provided. The Chair is absolutely right to point out that there may be issues in more rural communities because there may be more of a need to travel further for visits, and perhaps you do not get as much time with the people as you want. Those are the kinds of issues we would be looking to address.