Mr. Tony O'Brien:

Ms McGuinness will comment on dentistry in Youghal in a moment. I have heard some of the stuff from the "Liveline" programme this week, as well. It is important to make clear that even where a person does not qualify for a medical card or a GP-visit card, there is no circumstance in which - as was suggested on that programme yesterday - a person could be left with a monthly bill of €1,000 for drugs because the drugs payment scheme threshold is €144 per family per month. There are aspects of the debate that will sometimes cause fear and alarm through a lack of complete information, notwithstanding the significance of the underlying issues that are raised by people who call in to that programme.

In a similar vein, we are hearing for the first time about an alleged incident in Youghal, which was 12 hours earlier than the incident we know about. Those alleged facts are now on the record here. They have not been fact-checked or we would know about them. Public confidence is a very important issue. Putting that out in a situation where we are not able to respond with any kind of balancing information is clearly a difficulty for us.