Ms Mary Dunnion:

I thank Deputy Murphy O'Mahony for her questions. To answer the one about how one would monitor, there is a benchmark, the national standards for safer better healthcare which exist already and are mandated. The monitoring activity around issuing a licence would be aligned to what the licensing regulations will be. Dr. Holohan spoke about them and they will be determined by the Department of Health. The normal process thereafter is that we will monitor compliance with those regulations. There is nothing secret in that because that monitoring activity will have beside it guidance for people and it has a judgment framework, which shows how to make the judgment on the compliance. One would welcome the concept of licensing in healthcare because we can see its benefits in social services. It is important because there will be a huge engagement with the sector first. While public hospitals are used to seeing the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, in a certain way in the context of monitoring, the private sector has no exposure to it. There will be engagement with people to bring them to an understanding of the approaches we take. Any monitoring activity is coupled with guidance in terms of documentary evidence and a dialogue between the providers and us. Then, so that somebody does not get a surprise, we always engage at the end of an inspection with those responsible for delivering the service in order that they know what we have seen, found and what our judgments are. How we make the judgment and what is expected when that judgment is made is very clear in the legislative framework and in our communications with providers. That is compounded by our experience which evolves all the time and we, as regulators, are maturing because we have been here for 11 years. The greatest learning is that the people we inspect understand how we make the judgments. That is always available.