Mr. Robert Morton:

Yes, it has. In the winter of 2021-2022, for example, we received €5.9 million and that was recurrent money. Normally, winter money would not always be recurrent but this was recurrent money. We were able to deploy the money to mobilise nine pathfinder teams and, at this stage, four or five of those teams are already up and running. The remainder are due to be up and running by the end of March. They are located in Beaumont, Tallaght, Waterford, Limerick and Cork. They will be in Kilkenny, Letterkenny, Galway and another place. They will be up and running. This year, we will extend the pathfinder model to both Navan and Tullamore. The money is having a real impact. It is really impacting on patients, particularly older frail patients. It is having a much greater impact for our colleagues who work in the acute hospitals system because those are the patients who have a 57% chance of being admitted once they arrive at an emergency department, ED, unit. Also, their average length of stay tends to be twice the average length of stay of somebody under-75 years. That sort of investment gives a lot of impact to the wider health system and creates bed capacity for patients trying to access care. This winter, for example, we got €6.8 million non-recurrent money, which has been incredibly useful. We have used that money for hospital ambulance liaison people and increased our intermediate care capacity to support patient flow between hospitals. Again, the funding has been incredibly helpful because it has enabled hospitals to manage some of the surges they have had to deliver and kept hospital beds moving as best they possibly can by trying to keep patients moving out to nursing homes, residential care facilities or model 2 hospitals, for example. The investment has gone in but it stops on 31 March so that is this year's money but the pathfinder project will continue.