Hospitals must live within budgets and the new hospitals office will insist that they do. We cannot plan anything if people do not live within budgets. That will have to be the way as we go forward. Otherwise, nobody can plan for the circumstances that will arise.
On new beds, there is a proposed new hospital for the Mater. As of now, it is not proposed to have any additional beds therein. We need to reconsider this. Clearly, if we are providing new, state-of-the-art facilities, we must use them to increase the bed capacity in the Dublin area. I certainly wish to pursue this in conjunction with my colleague, the Minster for Finance, in the context of our Estimates. We may argue about how many we need but the bed capacity strategy suggested 3,000 between now and 2011. Clearly, if we need more beds, we must provide them through the projects that are under way.
The intention is that when the Health Service Executive, HSE, begins, it will do so with a clean balance sheet and not with a debt from this year. We will insist upon this.