Professor Risteárd Ó Laoide:

We have asked the regions to develop plans on how they are going to do that. Some of them are incorporated in larger developments but we have an interim phase where we will need to develop the chairs. Some of that is happening, and Mr. Canavan might comment. They are developing six new chairs in Galway, and St. Vincent's has nine new chairs. We need to staff those chairs and get them up and running.

There are other things, apart from the infrastructure itself, that we in the NCCP want to do with the regions. For example, our breast clinics have asymptomatic patients attending them, including people who require surveillance and people who are high risk. We have developed national strategies to take those people out of those clinics in order to create additional capacity. We hope to roll out that initiative in the next number of months, because they are critical. It is not just the actual capacity; it is developing smart capacity.