Mr. Martin Varley:

I was just coming to that. The OECD figures and the figures for the Irish health service show that we have, relatively speaking, a lower number of doctors than in other health services and higher numbers in other grades. This could be in administration, management or other areas. There is scope to look at this and probably gains that can be achieved. Is this dependent on restructuring the service? Yes, and I refer to geo-alignment in this regard. Geo-alignment on its own is not enough. The CHOs and hospital groups need to be merged; otherwise, we will not take out the layers or deal with the lack of effective communication and co-ordination. The Deputy talks about step-down care and home care services. If there are two groups and two separate budgets and everyone is trying to stay within his or her budget, dysfunction creeps in. We therefore need the one CEO, the one management structure. Then there would be hope of streamlining and more effective co-ordination. There is scope there. Where else do we have a higher spend? Our drugs bill is, relatively speaking, higher in international terms. From memory, we are talking about a €2 billion drugs bill in the service, so again, there is scope there.

Going back to the Deputy's questions of comparing how well paid doctors and consultants are, we are in a transitional stage whereby the discriminatory salaries, to which we referred, being paid to the newer consultants do not reflect in that comparison because we are talking about 10% to 15% of the total. The Deputy asked me what the differential is today. The differential today for a new type A consultant is approximately €76,000.