Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

The Deputy will recall that, on 20 March, we wrote to the Department. On 21 March, it sanctioned the 1,900. The actual definitive numbers, including both the 328 and finally the modelling by Professor Nolan, respectively, became available towards the end of March and then 15 April. It is really all about the timing, what was known when, and the uncertainty, as the Deputy referred to in his opening comments. At the time, we were pursuing the maximum number of ventilators knowing that we would have to figure out then how we would actually staff them. At the time – you would need an anaesthetologist here to talk about this – all sorts of medical and ethical discussions were going on about who would be ventilated and what the standard of ventilation care would be. There was no certainty at that point because we had no vaccine. We are sitting here behind a wall of vaccines and we all understand Covid variants, but back then there was no sense of whether there would be a vaccine and, if there was to be one, when.