Mr. Kevin McCarthy:

I cannot give a precise figure for what is owed at any particular point in time because invoices will have arrived in yesterday and this morning. It is a constantly moving picture, but we monitor closely the number of invoices on hand at any point in time. In terms of what we have done, an additional 22 staff were borrowed from other areas of the Department before Christmas to help to clear that backlog. Some €200 million was paid out in November and December. Since Christmas we have put additional staff into that team again in January to try to clear backlogs. So, we are confident that the pace of processing invoices has picked up, but there is a resource challenge for us in keeping pace with the scale of demand on that front. There is no question about that.

The fact that we have over 700 providers now shows that the scale of operation has grown hugely. That gave us that challenge towards the back end of last year, where clearly the invoices were building up. As the Deputy rightly points out, providers were waiting considerable periods of time to be paid. That is not in anybody's interest. It is certainly not in the interest of the providers. It is not in our interest, in terms of trying to keep people on board. So, we are very conscious of this as a significant priority. We are doing what we can in terms of-----