Professor Colette Cowan:

Regarding the funding model, we go into the Estimates process each year around what funding is required. The Deputy is quite right that significant funding has been invested in the health service over the last two years. However, if one drills into that one will note that the funding was mainly spent on revenue, the development of State services, personal protective equipment, PPE, for staff to keep them safe during the pandemic and a lot of funding went into the Covid-19 pandemic funding, so it did not have cause and effect on other developments in the service.

I am accompanied by Ms Mary Day, who is the new national director of acute hospitals in the HSE. She is looking at the whole capital process at the moment. She can talk to how we pitch in for the development of capital capacity builds and what we need there from a budget perspective.

As a hospital group, it is our brief to inform the acute hospitals and offer estimates, and they then take it to the Government, where it is decided what funding is assigned. I ask Ms Day to comment.