Mr. Robert Watt:

I am not quite sure if it is a first attempt because we had the health boards in the past. They received an allocation and presumably population and need was one of the drivers, but this is an attempt to set it out in a more systematic way. It follows on from the work of the Dáil committee that led to the production of the report, which asked what the population contribution per area should be, how that should vary by need, because different areas have different needs, and how, even though, of course, some services are provided nationally and straddle many different regions, we can have a different way of budgeting and a better way of allocating resources.

We have been involved in this over recent months in preparation for the budget which was announced yesterday. At the moment we tend to allocate based on national policies, given the way we talk about mental health, disability, acute, primary, etc. so it is a case of deciding the way to allocate in a region to take account of people's needs across different elements of the service.

Other countries are doing it, and in terms of the presentation members had in the Department a few months ago, and there was some discussion about this and I will come back to it, I think we need to try to set out in parallel before we actually do this to see how the two systems of budgeting will work and to see how it relates. It is a way of trying to ensure the resources follow the need.

Of course, this is not a perfect science but we are trying to ensure the money is being allocated where it ought to be allocated.