Ms Anne O'Connor:

Regarding outpatients, we can never give guaranteed assurances because healthcare is too unpredictable. However, on the basis of where we are going and our plan, outpatient care was significantly reduced during Covid but we moved a significant level of activity offline and had, on average, 80,000 virtual consultations a month. We are looking at different ways to provide outpatient care by providing it in different locations, etc. We will endeavour to maintain the necessary level of activity in outpatient care but we cannot guarantee it. If we experience a significant surge, we will not bring people in for outpatient appointments but that is not where we are today.

There are different types of home supports. We have people who are currently in receipt of home support but need more home support than they receive. We are looking at giving more people home support and increasing the numbers. We are also looking at the level of acuity in terms of home support. Anyone who is aware of home support will know that there was a limit and we struggled to give adequate hours to people who had a high level of need.