Professor John Higgins:

To be fair, we had the benefit of learning from the north east and the mid west, where the situation was quite fractious. On the first weekend we were in post, we had marches in Bantry and tractors half way from Bantry to Dáil Éireann. Therefore, we had to change the discussion. There is a template now. To go back to the point made about the urban areas, we have only one big urban area left as most of the country has seen significant reconfiguration. The big area left is Dublin and that is work for the new groups. Our advice would be to spend as much time as possible on engagement and to get expertise, like we did, from within Ireland but from outside of the system, who can provide business, financial, educational and clinical input that is independent and objective and to use that to ensure what is being done is right and will bring about change. We implemented significant change, which is better than to have a report that is not implemented.