Mr. Robert Watt:

There are service level agreements with all the hospitals whereby the hospitals are contracted by the HSE to provide various services, a budget is allocated and we set out what we expect for that budget. There are issues around expenditure controls within the hospitals, and it is not just the voluntaries as there are issues around control for all of the large acute hospitals. I do not think the variance we are seeing against budget this year varies, if that is the right way of putting it, or I do not think there are differences in the performance between the different hospitals, and they are broadly all showing the same type of overrun. We have a service level agreement. There are other issues that the Deputy mentioned which are more to do with the relationship between, let us say, clinical directors and consultants in terms of managing performance. There is always scope for us to improve the performance dialogue and improve the relationship between the HSE and these entities through the service level agreement, SLA, process and other processes, and that is something we need to work on. That performance dialogue will take place in the context of the budget and the service plan being finalised at the end of the year.