Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

The Deputy mentioned the funded workforce plan. I will engage with my national human resources, HR, colleagues. We have set limits. Even if the Department had not, for reasons of assessment and understanding, approved the pay numbers strategy that we submitted, we have been managing against that level. We have set revised limits to the year end for whole-time equivalents. We have allowed for a certain growth factor. We would always say that, even beyond the growth factor allowed for, if somebody can actually demonstrate in net terms that they have dropped their agency and overtime work below the level which it was at when we set the targets in June, we will not beat them over the head. People may say that they feel they have dropped agency and overtime costs, but if the data do not show it, it is not supported. That would be part of the limit where we would say that some reasonable flexibility has to be allowed but only if they are sustainably dropping the agency and overtime work. It is not a case of telling us there will be a time lag or that it will happen in two or three months, but for it to actually happen and be sustained. I have no doubt that the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation is interested for valid reasons. The funded workforce plan is as much about growing the number of nurses, not about-----