Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

To respond to the Deputy's question, we are looking at that issue. The Department published the report of the Value for Money and Policy Review of Nursing Home Care Costs at the end of 2021. That included a comparison of costs in public and private nursing homes. There is a programme of work flowing from that, including in our service plan, which looks at precisely what the Deputy highlighted. As we know, having more nursing staff correlates well with delivering better quality care. The fact that the public system has more staff and a richer mix of nursing is not necessarily a bad thing. However, getting the right balance between the two is absolutely part of that piece of work. We are looking at the issue.