Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I did not say that. I said that in the previous two years there had been a lifting of the moratorium in order to allow provision to be made for an 100 additional places and that we needed to examine seriously how we could get specific posts back into the service. We still do not know how many will leave the service at the end of February. If the numbers who left in previous years are anything to go by and given the fact that psychiatric nurses, in particular, can leave at an earlier age, we will probably lose more from the psychiatric services than from any other sector of the health service. We will have to examine seriously how we organise the posts in the system that will be necessary to deliver on the measures contained in A Vision for Change. That is to what the figure of €35 million relates. It is not to fund capital programmes but specifically to fund additional posts.

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