Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. O'Connell for being very honest with me. His answer puts a lot of stock in the national clinical programme for surgery and how this is changing.

While acknowledging the bona fide nature of the witnesses' contribution, it does not give me much confidence in the programme if eight years after introducing tonsillectomy as day case surgery, we have gone from approximately 8% to 10% and the goal is still a long way off. It is difficult to say the programme will be really successful if ten years into it we have not made progress. It is a different culture from the one I understand. We spoke previously about the private sector. If a business decides to do a procedure, it develops a business model and follows it. Everyone signs up to it. If a business had to spend ten years coaxing and cajoling its managers to follow the business model, it would not survive. I accept I am introducing a business element but it is a difficult to have faith in a programme when it takes so long to get change.