Mr. Robert Morton:

I thank the Deputy. On critical care and retrieval, which is another aspect of the services we deliver, there is a co-ordination function where there are essentially three parties involved. There is the dispatching consultant, who is the consultant actually making the decision to refer the patient to another hospital. Then there is the receiving consultant and a retrieval consultant. Those three consultants together have a conversation and agree the matrix, what is involved, what the patient's needs are and what resources are required. Obviously, that is determined by the availability of resources on the ground from our own perspective and also from the perspective of acute bed availability; invariably intensive care bed availability. Once that is discussed and agreed, a plan is put into place. If we have to rely on road, which we do predominantly at night, it often involves a road journey. The Deputy mentioned Sligo and Cork, for example. A retrieval team would have to leave Dublin, drive to Cork, or in that case drive to Sligo, support the local team, prepare the patient for transfer and then basically head to Cork if that is the destination. That may be because there is no intensive care bed available in Dublin.