Mr. Damien McCallion:

We have our own risk management systems in place internally and it would not just be the emergency department; it looks at the impact right across the whole hospital and into the community. Each hospital has a risk management policy and process, a nominated person to lead that, clinically and operationally within all the hospital's services. Those risks are managed daily at an operational level in terms of an emergency department, and decisions are made. There is what is called an escalation policy in terms of how they respond if pressures become increased through that day. Risks are managed effectively on a daily basis and also weekly through their own operational management teams. There is then a formal risk management process where the hospital looks at its overall risk because the emergency department is also impacted in terms of scheduled care because if there is no extra capacity and day beds are being used, for example, to accommodate emergency patients then the waiting lists cannot be run. So we have to look at the hospital as a whole.