Mr. Tony O'Brien:

In my haste to finish my statement in order to facilitate Deputies leaving for the vote in the Dáil, I forgot to acknowledge the kind remarks of the committee on Mr. Paddy Burke's retirement. After his 42 years of public service, he would be very touched and he would appreciate them very much. They will, of course, be relayed to him.

On the numbers of people waiting for fair deal, the more significant figure is the period people can expect to wait rather than the absolute number at any point in time, although that is, of course, a concern. The key point is that it is now down to four weeks so anyone on the list will not wait more than four weeks for financial approval. The only variation in when they get into a bed will be down partly to their preference and partly the availability of nursing home beds in a particular area and that varies a little bit throughout the country. Without the injection of funding, we were at 16 weeks. I would have expected that, by now, we would have been at 20 weeks with the additional funding and it would have been 22 by year end. The additional funding would create quite a change.

We will provide a written note to the committee of the distribution of the 300 beds across the acute sector. The submissions on the acute hospitals division, which are due today, will be available for discussion at the next implementation group next week.