Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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We are going to see changes next year. The budget for next year will have a subheading for each of the six regions. We are moving to regional reporting, which is only one thing, but it is an important change in the system and in how everybody thinks about it. Work is ongoing on healthcare econometrics and what the demand is region by region. There will be adjustments over time on that. One area where we have already done it is on the 3,000-bed plan, in which the mid-west region will go from having the lowest number of beds per head of population to the second highest. When those 3,000 beds are rolled out, the regions will not be perfectly equal, but they will be pretty close. There is a very wide discrepancy there now. There is an ongoing discussion about the level of local autonomy, because there has to be some central direction as well, obviously. There is a level of local discretion, both at a hospital level and at a regional level. That will be an iterative process. Inevitably there will be things done there that work, and some things that do not work. It needs to be flexible. Ms McGirr can speak in terms of some more detail regarding the resource allocation as well if that is useful.