Mr. Paul Reid:

I would love to give the Deputy a guarantee but what I can give is a commitment that that is the focus we have put on in the last few weeks. There was a challenge earlier about continuing to meet the service demands and the pressures on us but our commitment is to deliver the service plan that has been committed to, both to our acute hospitals and community services, and live within our budget. That is why we are looking ahead, month by month, at actual spend limits by each hospital manager, group and community organisation. That is the process we have in place. If there are certain service demands or pressures above and beyond that - such as current homecare packages where we have demands that are above and beyond even the extra budget we received last year - we are holding to our budget and our commitment that almost 17.5 million hours have been committed, to over 53,000 people for homecare packages; we aim to live within that budget. There are another 6,500 people who are currently looking for enhanced packages, that is extra hours, or new homecare packages but we are aiming to hold it within the budget we have to meet those difficult service pressures.