Mr. Jim Breslin:

It is the 12th highest. The Supplementary Estimate I mentioned earlier for 2017 was €195 million. It was not the type of figures that we were talking about there. At least half of it was for Government initiatives. It is not that we have repetition. We now have a figure for a first charge that is larger than the Department would have considered was likely to materialise and as a priority we are engaging to try to address that along with the other items the Chairman mentioned. That is the very detailed and intensive discussions that are going on with the HSE and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

The important thing is we do that within the context of the service plan, so that the services - just as the Chairman said - are not affected. Some of the slippage in the current year relates to savings initiatives that have not yet borne fruit, that are not patient care related and we have to redouble efforts to achieve those. The Chairman is right in saying that there are significant financial challenges in 2018. There is a commitment in 2018 on behalf of the two Ministers to seek to address those and to do so without affecting patient care. However, it is going to require serious effort on behalf of the Department and the HSE to achieve that objective.