Professor David Keegan:

We have had much contact and made a few submissions. They are sitting on our business case and funding request at the moment. I understand – I could be wrong – but it was relayed verbally to me that it is with the Department of Health for ratification. Within that, part of the funding has come through to Ireland East Hospital Group for the theatres. If the Deputy sees a business class that includes it, we have already secured the funding for staffing in the new theatres and we can get on with that work.

On the funding for NERIECS regional staff and equipment, we have just put in for one year's worth of equipment. We think that will be enough in the medium term and it is still to be signed off. The third part of that equation is the transformation costs. It is to build up our own transformation team to make sure we are not delivering waste, such as through a Lean Six Sigma black belt, and to wean ourselves off our external consultants, who we are indebted to. The IBM Simpler team sort of gave us the idea and facilitated. However, everybody who has been involved, in particular at senior level, has grown on this journey and is learning a lot. We are quite confident we learn from within. Those are the three aspects, namely, the theatres, the regional plan staffing and equipment and, finally, the transformation costs. There is one typo in the slides, but that is corrected in the statement.