Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

The lead organisation on the discussion and negotiation of the original agreement, which we refer to as the heads of term agreement, was the Department, heavily supported by the HSE, with input from other relevant agencies. Effectively, it was a very large insurance policy. In the end, €287 million was spent. What did we get for that? A bit like any insurance policy, one should not be unhappy if one's house did not burn down. We did not need all of the capacity we got but we got access to 2,300 beds and we got 16,000 procedures done in April, 17,000 or 18,000 in May and another 17,000 in June. Approximately 50,000 procedures went through those 2,300 beds in the three months. Effectively, it provided us with a safety net. Thankfully, because of all the other actions of the State, it was not needed at the level it could have been, but that is a good news story rather than a bad news story. We actually got substantial benefit from it as well as it being kind of a safety net that, thankfully, we did not have to fully use.