Mr. Tony O'Brien:

I thought the point Senator Burke raised was that we have too many administrators. We have significant increased our public health nursing workforce in the past year. We have not quite reached the objectives sought, but we will seek to increase our nursing and other front-facing health professionals in line with our ability to recruit. The only thing that holds us back is our ability to recruit in that area. There is no question of an agenda of not recruiting to refill posts in those areas. We increase the workforce in line with the funded workforce plan.

Senator Conway-Walsh asked about the patches. It is important to emphasise that there has been no withdrawal of reimbursement for those patches. There has been the introduction of a secondary layer of approval. On a three-month basis, it is possible, on application by a general practitioner, for approval to be granted for a continued prescription under the medicines management programme.