Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That depends, to some extent, on how many of the nursing homes and the section 39s return the self-assessment. The Deputy and many colleagues have made the point - and it is something that I was acutely aware of myself - that the proposed approach, while it worked for HSE employees, was not working for section 39s and nursing homes and there was also a delay in paying firefighters and the Defence Forces so I intervened. On Defence Forces and firefighters, the money transferred some time ago from the Department of Health to those line Departments so that money is being paid out. On the much larger number of people that the Deputy referenced, I asked the HSE to take a different approach. The HSE, as the Deputy will be aware as we have discussed this before, was going to hire a firm to do an audit to have very detailed information and then send the money out. What I asked the HSE to do instead of that was send out a self-assessment, get those self-assessments in, pay out the money and then audit afterwards. Quite a significant number of those self-assessments have come back and quite a significant number of those people are now being paid. What I want to see is the maximum number possible paid before Christmas for the obvious reasons.