Mr. Bernard Gloster:

It is important to say that the CHOs come with a historical context. There were 32 community care areas across the 26 counties in the former health boards. They became 32 local health offices in the first HSE. They were purely historical and there was no change to them. The CHOs came after the 32 local health offices and hospitals were merged into 17 areas of the country. We are now moving on to the Sláintecare iteration of that, which is six regions. The delivery system in those regions will be more population focused and measured, as opposed to what we were given by history. What it gave us was that on the western seaboard there was higher propensity to develop community services, but the acute bed capacity did not get developed to the extent needed over the years. In the greater Dublin area, there was historically a more significant investment in acute hospitals and acute hospital infrastructure. The community services were somewhat behind. It is all somewhat predetermined or variable. We are now moving on to the evidence-based and population allocation of resources. That should seek to address the various imbalances. We can see right across the performance measures that we have. Some CHOs will perform exceptionally well over others. It does not mean that the people are any better. It is often determined by the resources they have available to them.