Mr. Tony O'Brien:

History shows that it has been a challenging target. As I mentioned to the committee member who left us earlier, the current position is to manage down reliance on agency and overtime, which includes a focus on absenteeism, to the minimum level possible consistent with maintaining safe services. Agency and overtime in some of our hospitals is an underlying fact of their operation because of their geographic location and mix of services. Some hospitals depend disproportionately on agency staff in the medical and nursing areas, whereas other hospitals that do not have the same issues tend to rely on them in the context of surge capacity and covering gaps left by excessive levels of absenteeism. It is not a uniform picture. In the context of seeking to manage this, the critical issue is to spend the minimum amount but to do so in a way that does not disrupt the safe provision of care to patients who need it.