Mr. Pat Healy:

On the question of pay and how we deal with it, from a public sector point of view, the HSE does not set pay rates. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform sets them, and we fall in with that. We have no choice in that. We pay the rates that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform sets for public pay. It controls public pay policy and we implement what it decides.

Competition law dictates the private side of things. All of our tenders are fully compliant with competition law, which is quite strict. We comply with that, and specify in that, as Deputy O'Reilly has said, the requirement on the providers to comply with legislation. That covers the minimum wage and so on.