Mr. Liam Woods:

There is a management of the income and that is normal in the same way there is on the cost side. There is, however, no suggestion that there is a requirement to attract private patients to balance hospital budgets, which was underlying the Deputy's question.

I refer to the question on technology. Many of the HSE's technology proposals, including the electronic health record and so on, will support waiting list management because they are all about scheduling patient care and flow. Projects that are universal to the health environment are also relevant in this area. We can support specific projects around using smaller technology solutions to support common waiting lists across hospitals within a group, for example, on an ongoing basis as we go through a year. They tend to be relatively inexpensive.