Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

Each of the 29 hospitals with an ED has a local plan. Colleagues can talk about the specifics of the language and the word "will". To go back to the bigger workforce planning issue, maybe we need to provide more information, but I would be surprised if we have not provided everything we said we would provide. We will certainly check that.

The bigger issue, however, is that we know that the number of places for graduating nurses, healthcare professionals and doctors needs to be increased. We have seen the recent ESRI report, which makes it clear that the number needs to be more than doubled in some cases, and the committee has heard the Secretary General of the Department say that. Inside the HSE we have established a specific HR resourcing piece to look at our input to that process, so there is a lot of focus on growing the number of places. As the Deputy will know, that takes time and investment, so-----