Mr. Paul Reid:

I am trying to tell the Deputy that it will be less than €100 million from what we judge right now. It is a process that is ongoing. It is an assessment of €1 billion of provisions and accruals for the end of 2020. That is the scale of what we have assessed. We initiated that review jointly with the Department. My judgment right now is it will be less than €100 million and probably greater than €50 million but I cannot be very specific. That process will determine if we need to do it at all.

I will make some brief comments on two other issues that the Deputy might appreciate. On the question of regionalisation, I ask the Deputy not to make too many early judgments based on correspondence between Mr. Watt and me. On the specific question of corporate functions, there is no doubt there will be HR and finance functions in regions and they will need them. They should have them. We were having an exchange about a core principle; there will be some things that would be best held at the centre. Clinical standards and guidance is an element in which we do and will need consistency across regions in future. I urge the Deputy not to make too many judgments because we are still in the design phase of what that might look like. The Deputy will, quite rightly, probe this strongly when we get to a better stage on that.

The recruitment question is topical and there are two points to make. We are targeting to recruit 10,000 people. I have a role as a public servant, which I respect hugely, and I know Mr. Watt has a role as a civil servant and Secretary General, to advise the Minister and the Government if we see a jeopardy at any early stage in the planning process. Based on what we have done for the past two years, we see not just the health recruitment market but the complete recruitment market under significant stress. That is particularly so in the health sector, which has a global market. We have flagged to the Department and the Minister that 5,500 is our likely projection but we will be pulling out all the steps to achieve 10,000. On a positive note, in January we had 675 net recruits, which is a good start.