Mr. Robert Watt:

The Sláintecare proposal, which we support and are working towards, is that allocations will be made on a regional basis and based on the population needs in the region. As the Senator is aware, the budget is currently allocated based on considerations such as older persons, disability and so on. Our hope for 2023 is to have, in addition to the existing budget, a shadow budget to set out what it would look like in terms of allocations to each of the regions on a per capitabasis and then see how that works. Ultimately, there are benefits to the objective and general principle of saying there is a population of 700,000 or 800,000 in an area and we are going to allocate €3 billion, €3.5 billion or whatever the figure is to it and having a person accountable for providing services in that area. When we do the shadow budget for 2023, it will be interesting to see how it will look per head of population and per region and the extent to which that-----