Mr. Tony O'Brien:

It is a slightly harder question to answer than it first appears. The budget, or pay, is categorised into a number of categories, namely, medical and dental; nursing; health and social care professionals; management and administration; general support staff; and other patient and client care. In simplistic terms, the starting point would be to examine only management, administration and general support staff, and I will explain why that is not as precise as it might be. The proportions of staff in those categories have been changing. In 2007, the proportion of the workforce in all the front-line categories was 71.8% of all staff. It now stands at 75.4% of all staff. However, within the category of management, administration and general support staff are a wide range of staff who are in the front-line space, such as the clerks in hospitals who greet people at emergency departments or outpatient registration. While they are classified as management and administration, the distinction is not easy to make. Over the period, there has been a biasing of exits and recruitments in favour of the categories that are clearly 100% frontline.

Among the many staff in the management and administration category, a great proportion are also doing patient-facing work. I regard those who take care of hygiene on a ward as front-line staff. I regard those who perform civil marriages and those who answer the calls for medical cards and issue medical cards as front-line staff, although they are categorised as management and administration due to our narrow framework within which all pay must be classified. It is not very straightforward for me to say exactly which staff members are wholly or partially frontline or administration. The bias is moving in the right direction.