Mr. Fintan Hourihan:

The HSE knows where the contracts are held. As I said earlier, many contracts within the database are probably inactive. To answer the question in a slightly different way, I know where there are plenty of black spots in Dublin, for example, and I could trace them throughout the parts of Dublin that are known to me. From Killarney to Dundalk and from Wexford to Galway and on to Donegal, the black spots are well known. Obviously, dentists tend to be concentrated in larger urban areas but it is easy to know where the black spots are. The HSE publishes a database - we can certainly point the committee in the direction of the relevant part of the website - which lists all of the contract holders by county. As a result, it is easy to identify where there is a dire shortage. We know from calls from our members and from members of the general public, and the HSE certainly knows. It is an established system.