Mr. Paul Reid:

To respond to the second question on the resources and what has been stepped up during the summer, I will make some factual comments from our perspective in the HSE. We sought and secured funding from the Government for extra beds starting in March, and during the first phase we put in an extra 409 acute beds and an extra 400 sub-acute, level 2 hospital beds. We therefore put in place 800 beds during that phase, and for the next phase we have secured funding for an extra 590. In addition, on the testing and tracing capability, I will say a couple of things about resourcing. First, we sought the funds to build the capacity for testing and tracing during the past few months. I referred earlier to a sum of €450 million. Second, as for our protection and capacity, there was a key issue with PPE. Our likely spend on PPE this year will be about €900 million. Furthermore, the committee will be aware of the arrangement we came to with private hospitals. Various initiatives were put in place to protect us in the first phase. There are significant elements in our plan for the second phase and winter planning, both in terms of capacity and doing things very differently.