Mr. Colm Desmond:

On the submission in April of the draft strategy and the recent agreement of control figures, I confirm that there has been very substantial engagement between the Department and the HSE to reach the greatest understanding of the different components of the workforce. It has been an extremely significant and useful piece of work and is absolutely necessary, given that the funding of workforce planning is such a vital part of the Health Service Executive and that such a significant part of the Estimate is driven by salaries and payments. There has been extremely detailed engagement on these issues to try to assist and gain that understanding. We have recently agreed to certain control figures with the HSE.