Mr. Jim Breslin:

The HSE gets a builder to build the primary care centres and it puts its own staff in it. It can also put other staff in it. Alternatively, the HSE leases the centre and often when it leases it, it will lease it from a developer and the developer will also lease part of the facility to GPs.

The third option is PPPs. We now have a public private partnership programme under way with funding in place from the European Investment Bank to put in place a programme of primary care centres. Right across this year we have openings of primary care centres. We will have to keep going at that for the next couple of years but we have a significant upgrade in the infrastructure of primary care. It has to be modernised if we are to say to people that healthcare is not all about hospitals, it is also about primary care facilities.