Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Shortall on her election to the Chair, and we very much look forward to working with her. We have a huge job of work and nobody underestimates that. We must be very mindful of the potential for overlap. We will not get any work done if we spend all our time in here allowing ourselves to be lobbied. Notwithstanding that, we must balance our time, as I do not want anybody to get the impression that somehow we will not listen or we are not available. The work of the other health committee will, I hope, take up some of that lobbying work.

Whatever findings we make must be evidence-based, but there is a substantial body of evidence out there already. I have publicly stated that on a number of occasions. The health service has, to a large extent, been researched to death and there are major volumes of research already available to us. We need to be cognisant that there is much information out there that we can and should be using. Equally, people will want to come and see us and we must be mindful that there are players with a vested interest. They may be strong or powerful people seeking to influence us away from what is certainly Sinn Féin policy with regard to universal health care, rather than universal health insurance, for example. We must be mindful of that and be careful that whomever we see, there is a balanced view.

We are here to do the work and we are very much looking forward to it. We wish the committee well. However, a substantial amount of work can be done with written submissions and we do not need to have a huge number of hearings. We can learn much from what is out there already.