David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will start; we will not waste any time. As regards the productivity and savings task force action plan that was published, one of the areas that was key to identifying savings was agency spend - overtime, obviously. As part of the pay and numbers strategy that was published, there were a number of pillars to it setting a ceiling for staff recruitment. The ceiling is too low. We have had that argument in the past but, be that as it may, there is a ceiling there and Mr. Gloster's objective is to stay within that ceiling. I refer to agency spend, converting it into whole-time equivalents and then looking at overtime. Agency spend is enormous. I think it is approximately €500 million, which is a huge amount of money. How many whole-time equivalents does the agency spend equate to?

What is the number?