Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

There is not. There are ceilings in the health system. It does not apply to home help, to accident and emergency services or to the packages for disability and the elderly. We have appointed more than 40,000 new staff to the health service in the past seven years. Clearly we must be prudent and sensible in the areas where we recruit new staff. It would be mainly in the area of front-line workers where the additional staff would be recruited. The home help service is not affected. On the contrary, it will be greatly expanded during 2006.

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