Mr. John Connaghan:

I know that, but I wanted to reassure the Deputy on that. Deputy O'Connell has raised an important point about where we want to go, which is also dear to my heart. Mr. Breslin has previously described a system we eventually want, with much greater delegation and responsibility at local level. From my perspective, this means empowering local clinical directors, at local level not just at group level, to have as much delegated responsibility and authority as possible. That includes budgetary authority as much as possible and responsibility for the team. We do not have this on a universal basis, but it is in some places in Ireland. To my mind, this is a good direction to aim for. I say this because the kinds of decisions that are made at local level cannot really be made 15 or 20 miles away. One needs to be able to make decisions as they happen on the ground with regard to staff, team deployment, team working, analysing the workload ahead and sorting out the resources appropriately. To answer the Deputy's question, if we can get interest for that type of delegation, and if we can put in the appropriate training to make it happen, then this will be a good thing to look forward to in the future. I have spoken to a group of clinical directors on this very subject and I know that clinical staff would really warm to that idea.