Professor Steve Thomas:

Which question to choose? Let us start with the last one first. Shortly after we helped with the production of the Sláintecare report we did an overall costing of what it all adds up to together. It comes to the heady total of approximately €19 billion, but that figure is over ten years. That has to be taken in the context of likely public expenditure of approximately €200 billion in that context. If the figure of €19 billion is thrown around it starts to get scary but the fact is, within the context of €200 billion, it is not that big a price ticket, given that we are then engaging with wholesale reform of the system, universalisation and an expansion of entitlements. The reason we do not present them together in the costings is that they are slightly different things. The first relates to the annual increment in entitlement expansion while the transition fund refers to the actual amount of money spent. It is somewhat of a case of apples and oranges, but it is probably around €19 billion. Again, that has to be put in the context of the overall spend. That would be my comment on that.