Dr. Graham Love:

I think it is important. There is quite a broad definition of consulting. We took the Deputy's question, went out to the institutions and went back to 2011, I think. This is a significant spend, as the Deputy mentioned, of €153 million. It is critical to see it in the context of the spend across the institutions over that seven or eight year period - not as a justification in itself, but if the Deputy remembers, the expenditure across the institutions over that period was probably somewhere between €12 billion and €15 billion.

At times they will need additional skill sets that are not available in their institution; we have just heard of an example. At times they may have some of those skill sets in their institution, but they need additional capacity for a period of time, such as the mental health services we just heard about. At times they might be doing a building project and need to bring in a specialist for a particular focused task, so it is important to see the consultancy spend in that kind of context. That is really important to stress here.