Mr. John Connaghan:

I will deal with some of the questions and pass a few on for answer by my colleagues. On Deputy Durkan's first point on flow and audit results, if he does not mind, I will send him the results of what has been achieved so far in some of the major flow programmes. These show what was happening last year, what is happening now, whether there has been an improvement and what learning we have got from the programmes.

I will deal with the issues of emergency space and catering for a major emergency in the same answer.

The experience in Ireland is that, when we have an emergency, whether it is snow or storms, we cope tremendously well and we bounce back relatively quickly. Much of that is to do with the flexibility on the part of staff in terms of being available at all hours and, as already stated, remaining on site at times to be able to cope with the exigencies of the service. Overall, the experience is quite good. In terms of flexing up for major emergencies, members will not be surprised to know that, through the year, we have a number of major emergency exercises to prepare for events, whether a flu pandemic, terrorist attack or otherwise. Mr. McCallion, who used to be in charge of that section, can provide more colour if necessary.

During the flu pandemic in the UK some years ago - the UK is no different from Ireland in this regard - we had a contingency plan which looked at the requirement to rapidly increase the number of intensive care beds and respiratory facilities available. We did that by turning high-dependency unit beds into intensive care unit beds, and we had a backstop which was that, if push came to shove, we could use theatres and that kind of facility. Thankfully, it never came to that, but we have these kinds of plans available and laid out in a series of escalation responses for any issue that might arise.

I will hand over to Dr. Henry who will deal with the issues raised on the medical side.