Mr. John Connaghan:

I will start nationally and then go more local in terms of where we are. Nationally, we have 2,900 consultants of all types in the Irish health service. We have more than 300 current vacancies across that complement. Regarding the questions the Deputy has raised about excess costs around locums, in many ways one can see the relationship there in terms of what we need to do to try to fill service slots to keep services running with expensive agency, locum and overtime rates. When the Deputy gets the analysis, I hope he recognises that.

Regarding the position in the south east, I will start with budgets. The south-east community health care mental health budget was increased from €83.5 million in 2012 to €99.4 million-----