Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witness for the presentation. Every time the Minister has spoken in recent weeks he has been very careful to say that it is not always about money. However, with the exception of one, all of the things he has done and that he has said have worked in recent weeks have required money. The only thing I can find that does not require money is that section in Mr. O'Brien's speech on the leadership role of clinical directors, consultants, nurses and managers.

That correlates with the Minister's appeal on RTE ten days ago asking nurses, emergency department doctors and surgeons to do extra rounds. I am very worried if it is at that level on national media, that we are appealing to management and clinicians to do something that I believe - I might be naive - they should be doing week in and week out. Will the Minister clarify it for me because I might be stupid? Are we at the level where we are appealing at a ministerial level to our senior management teams in hospitals to do the things that they are being paid to do? If that is the case, do we have an issue with our senior management teams in our 28 acute hospitals?

The Minister mentioned that the emergency department task force is not an emergency task force. What does he expect to get from it that is different from what we have expected from the special delivery unit in recent years?

What has happened to the special delivery unit, SDU. Is it gone or is it still there? Does it do something that is different from what we will expect from the emergency department task force? Are any of the people in the SDU now part of the emergency department task force? That is just in recent weeks. When we are setting budgets at the beginning, what is the correlation around fair deal, home care packages and community integration teams? When we are spending €300 million on this or €975 million on that, what correlation is there for that budget versus the actual need and requirements of people who need to access that budget? Is there any correlation? Is it just because we have a finite budget that we can only allocate what we have to allocate?

I am only being opportunistic. The Minister said and accepted that Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital is under pressure. I publicly pay tribute to Margaret Swords and her team in Drogheda. In my humble opinion, they do a stonking job given that there is a genuine lack of resources there. The Minister said he was going to help her. Can he enlighten us as to how, where, when and how quickly he will do that?