Mr. Tony O'Brien:

I will invite Ms McGuinness to give further information on medical cards, Dr. Carroll to comment in respect of neuro-rehabilitation and Messrs O'Brien and Carter to comment in respect of non-consultant hospital doctors. I will begin, however, by dealing with the issue raised by Deputy Ó Caoláin with regard to events in the hospital in Crumlin this week, over which I share his concerns. When I learned yesterday evening about what I would describe as the catastrophic failure of the incident management process, I immediately asked our national director of quality and patient safety to commence a review of the incident management process and a root cause analysis to establish how the management of the event led to incorrect communication to 18 parents. No amount of spin by public relations consultants for the hospital can mask the seriousness of the matter.

It is important the health system as a whole acknowledges that where things go wrong we need to be judged by how we manage them, recognising that from time to time things will go wrong. It is clear that this has not been managed in the way we would like. However, the aim of the root cause analysis is to establish why and how it went wrong and how we can ensure there is no recurrence in such circumstances.

A question was asked about defibrillators. The answers provided were not about community defibrillators but the re-equipping programme in the ambulance service. The defibrillators in question will be exclusively in national ambulance service vehicles rather than-----