Mr. Damien McCallion:

I will. Some of it will be down to historical reasons in terms of capacity to recruit and so on, but we can give the breakdown to the committee.

In terms of the points made by the Chairman on primary care and what we can do in the intervening years, in general terms there is significant further scope. We all accept that to build hospital beds and other capacity in the community will take time. I have mentioned the community intervention teams and there are good examples of this but there are other areas where we have further work to do to enhance primary care. One example is what is happening in Mallow where consultants come out from Cork University Hospital. Diagnostic facilities are available there as well.

On specific resourcing of certain centres, be they in Balbriggan or elsewhere, initially the primary care centres are developed around the existing resources but we are trying to identify where we can put in new resources. For example, this year under the chronic disease programme people will be going in to work with primary care teams on diabetes. To get full geographical coverage will take time but there has been investment in recent years in diabetic nurse specialists to go out to work with practices.

The GP contract is also key. Some diagnostic facilities have been rolled out in primary care and one of our additional measures in January was to try to extend that roll-out for a time but that is still very much at the formative stage.

Therefore, there is definitely more scope in terms of the point about the specific centre. On the broader point the Chairman made about what primary care can contribute given the length of time it will take and the challenge we will inevitably face over the next number of winters, there is a need for significant investment in the resource to make those function in a much more powerful way in trying to avoid presentation to emergency departments.