Mr. Robert Watt:

It is no doubt that our projected spending in the health area, across all the different areas of health spending, is a very difficult thing. From expenditure on PCR to disability services to acute services there is such a vast number of different aspects to it. There are hundreds or even thousands of discrete elements. There is a significant job first of all to set the budget properly, which we hope to do every year, and then to execute it and manage the events during the year, which inevitably will throw the budget off, and then to try to take steps to correct that. This is an ongoing challenge. We all accept in the Department, and I know that Mr. Reid's team also accepts this, that we need to do better. This year, when we strip out the Covid costs and when it comes to non-Covid core spend, there is obviously underspend in recruitment. That offsets some overspends elsewhere in the acute system due to loss of income and more overtime and agency work. We are probably hoping to be more or less in balance when it comes to the core spending, but significantly over in terms of Covid.