Ms Colette Cowan:

The income target for the UL Hospitals Group is €70 million and the stretch target is €7 million which I have to attempt to achieve over the financial year. With reference to the emergency department, I will give an example in orthopaedics because that is what was shown on "RTÉ Investigates" in Croom Hospital; 40% of the patients who come through the only emergency department in the mid-west region are private patients who attend with orthopaedic trauma and are treated on site. That skews the data when we are looking at the public-private mix and equally around our income generation. That happens every day throughout the system. Annually, 65,000 patients attend the emergency department and they may opt in or opt out of being public or private patients at the time of admission.