Mr. Brian Fitzgerald:

On the management versus clinical, aside from administrative staff our management team is currently seven in number, and we employ just under 1,000 staff. When I was in St. James's Hospital as CEO, we had 4,500 staff and we had a key management team of around ten, but we had clinical directorate structures below that which had their own management teams as well. I would not have that in my current hospital. However, we have two clinical directors, one for medicine and one for surgery, and we have a chief of staff, so the clinicians are very much involved in the management of the hospital and sit at board level as well.

On staff absenteeism rates, last time I looked we were at 2%. We benchmark against the HSE when it publishes its rates. I think overall it was about 4% the last time I looked.

The cost per night is interesting. I say this because when I was in the public system I was very much a person who encouraged the costing of services. That goes back to the early 2000s. I call it price, some people call it cost, as I said earlier. The Government has legislation in place currently for tier one hospitals in the public system to charge €1,000 per night for a private patient in the public system. I am sure the committee has heard that before. Forgive me, there are commercial sensitivities because we have different prices with different insurers, but I can assure the committee our price is nowhere near that.