Professor Sean Tierney:

Although we do not have multi-annual budgeting in the area of health, we have a multi-annual system in regard to our pre-budget submission. We focused on three issues this year. Those are child health, about which we talked, improving access to primary care, about which we also talked, and if there was one issue I would pick out, it is that there needs to be a health consideration in all policies. We need to test the long-term impact on health of measures such as changes in taxation and changes in provision of services because many short-term measures and short-term cost savings have long-term cost increases attached to them. We had a recession 30 years ago and there was a huge reduction in investment in health promotion and health prevention. I see the results of that every day in my clinic and in our hospital and I hope the same will not be the case in 30 years time.