Mr. Dean Sullivan:

I would need to read the small print of the report again but I was involved in the process at the time and my recollection is that it was not trying to land the answer on a sixpence in the way the Deputy might be implying. It was a set of reasonable assumptions around the impact of public health interventions, the impact of additional staff and resources in the community and the potential to improve how we use the existing bed stock, an issue to which Ms Magahy alluded. After all of that, the figure left was the 2,600 number to which the Deputy referred. Those were the assumptions as opposed to five things all having to break perfectly, in which case only 2,600 beds would be needed. I am happy to proceed on the basis of getting 2,600 beds in place, and implementing the other interventions that are necessary so that only 2,600 beds are needed. We will then see where we are. There are an awful lot of moving parts in health and social care that the Deputy is well aware of. Population needs may change over the next ten years and so on. We will work towards that in good faith. We are constantly looking at it in any event. We have processes in place and we have the model whereby we re-run and test things and so on. I am not aware of anything in the review that is so far out there as to be virtually unachievable. The figure is about right, plus or minus, and we will keep refocusing and reviewing as we go forward.