Mr. George MacGinnis:

I am going to duck the issue slightly. The Senator's comment goes to the heart of the eligibility assessments which HIQA and other organisations would carry out as against the sort of things which the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, NICE, would look at.

Even in Scotland some of those decisions have varied. Based on local populations, different decisions have been arrived at from those in England. That is really a question on eligibility for the authorities here. Looking at demand and capacity - which we are here to talk about - having clear thresholds is an important part of keeping a handle on demand and ensuring that the activity is correctly directed at those clinically most justified. Other people will be held to account for those decisions. Similarly, the issue of medical cards is outside the scope of anything we can comment on here. A question was asked on medical cards. That is a detail. It would be for people to make a clear, clinical, economic and welfare judgment on the cases presented. The two systems North and South are clearly very different. However, they are both under huge pressures. At a detailed level, perhaps they will be making different financial decisions, based on some of the choices in front of them. In that regard, some variation is not unexpected between different systems and different parts of systems.