Dr. Philip Crowley:

In reference to the quality and patient safety division and the decisions being made on the funding of organisations, I accept that some hard decisions were made on the funding of a number of organisations. However, we continue to fund national patient advocacy independent groups. We have increased funding in the area of advocacy to support the commitments being made to enhance advocacy in the disability sector and also in the acute hospitals sector. We have also worked with a group of people who have either personally or whose families have experienced harm as a result of their experiences of health care provision in Ireland. We have tried to support the Patient Safety Champions Network which is independent of us. We try to facilitate its work in order that it can generate its agenda from its experiences in order that we can listen to what it considers we should be doing to deal with the harm that, unfortunately, is caused in health care settings. We are also trying to support the measurement of quality and safety measures. We measure a great deal, but we need to measure more. This is directly relevant to what a patient experiences, the outcomes he or she experiences and his or her care. We have more measures in the service plan this year than ever before and I hope we will continue to expand the picture our performance report gives the committee and the public of the quality of care we provide and seek to provide.