Ms Susanna Lyons:

On the gearing issue, it comes down to concentration risk in regard to growth. I just want to clarify that the gearing matter and leveraging is not a sector-wide issue. It is only for a very small number of AHBs that are demonstrating they are meeting their own headroom in regard to it. We have highlighted historically where in growing by debt and debt alone, you will naturally meet your own headroom in regard to that growth. For a very small number of AHBs, that is absolutely coming to fruition, so there need to be different considerations in that regard, and maybe significant mergers to help leverage their balance sheets better and so on. That is very important. I refer the committee to page 30 of the pack, where we can see that it is only a very small number, whereas the rest of the sector is not wildly leveraged and does not have the same issue. From a regulatory point of view, there is concentration risk from delivery. Those organisations that are delivering are utilising debt and debt alone and, as a result, the natural fruition is that they are going to meet their own capacity.