Mr. Patrick Burke:

Of the €2.4 billion. In other words, the cost of administering the service in its entirety was 1.13% of that in 2012 and 1.02% in 2011. In comparison, comparable reimbursement entities such as Blue Cross, Kaiser or VHI have operating costs from 7% to 10%. The figure of 1.13% is the overall cost of the administration of the reimbursement and assessment of eligibility.

As Mr. O'Brien said earlier, we had an operation which was distributed nationally, involving 450 or more individuals and whatever governance was over each of those.

We have now centralised it and there are approximately 150 people there. The efficiencies in head count allowed the HSE run down its staffing or HR. Centralisation enabled us to allow some who had previously been involved in that process to become involved in other frontline processes and others to exit the administration.