Mr. David Walsh:

Clear advice was issued through the management system in the HSE and that advice was also shared with Nursing Homes Ireland. The HSE's national director of human resources wrote to the agencies used by the HSE instructing them not to assign their workers to multiple sites. There were, however, tensions at times. I refer to when the HSE was asked to support some of its own units that were in trouble because of staff being off sick, or private or voluntary units with the same problem. Out of necessity, therefore, that meant transferring an employee from one service to another. It is important to note that aspect, but that had to be done on a risk-assessed basis to do the most good and the least harm. The instruction sent out was to not share staff across units and that instruction was also given to the agencies that we deal with.