Mr. Barry O'Brien:

It is clear from our presentation that we are able to take from our data that we are paying €166,482,000 on allowances overall. We are clearly indicating that this comprises all staff employed directly by the HSE and all staff fully funded by the HSE. If one breaks that down, therefore, we have approximately 65,000 staff directly employed and the remainder of the 102,000 are employed by voluntary hospitals and other voluntary agencies. That is the total figure from our financial data for what is being spent on allowances. That is the full scope.

That said, as Mr. Tony O'Brien said in his opening statement, a separate exercise is currently being prepared for the staff numbers and costs which we gave to the committee per allowance. In other words, if one looks at the data we gave the committee and I said there are X number of nurses on location and other allowances, they relate to HSE staff only. An exercise to capture the details of allowance paid in the voluntary sector is currently being finalised and will be with DPER, but it will deliver the totality of the sum which we declared in our opening statement.