Mr. Paul Reid:

I will give a quick answer and my colleague might also answer. First, I am more than happy to be before the committee or any number of committees. We fully respect the oversight role of the Oireachtas.

Second, with regard to the issue of agency staff and private versus public costs, certainly during Covid the movement of agency staff between nursing homes was a primary factor, although we are not going into it today. We worked very closely with Nursing Homes Ireland, which is private, on reducing the movement of agency staff between multiple sites, and that was one of the areas we wanted to address.

I will make a brief comment on the second point on staff applying to go from private nursing homes into the HSE. This is something we are always cognisant of in that we do not want to cannibalise the sector. Certainly, during Covid, we put very clear communications out into the system that we should not draw our resources from private nursing homes.