Mr. David Walsh:

The HSE has been working with Nursing Homes Ireland for several months, and nursing homes have also had the benefit of the temporary assistant payment scheme, which has allowed them to invest in an enhanced level of service to enable them to deal with those sorts of issues. We have requested every unit, which is reiterated in the report of the expert review team, to have a plan in place, from the perspectives of management and staff, to give the required resilience to manage if there should be another outbreak in a unit. There may be cases, despite a good plan being in place, where it becomes difficult to manage with staffing. The HSE and other partners will then do all in their power to assist.

There are difficulties, such as the one we mentioned earlier in this discussion in transferring staff from one facility to another and the risk associated with that. In the first instance, every unit should have its own plan and the HSE will do all in its power to back up those plans should the worst come to the worst.