Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses spoke about the distribution of resources. One of our work streams will examine the area of resource allocation. We propose to do a kind of socioeconomic profile of each of the community health care organisations, CHOs, and then look at where staff are allocated across primary care in order to identify where the big gaps exist. Ideally, we should be moving towards a situation where we have a transparent and objective resource allocation model that can be established in the Department and used. The bones of such a model is there. We should be using that objective resource allocation model when it comes to allocating nurses, physiotherapists or GPs so that we know the facts. The committee is very much committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development.

A number of issues were raised, especially later on, that relate to the terms of the contract. What kind of influence do the witnesses have in their representative organisations - whether it is the Irish Medical Organisation, the National Association of General Practitioners, etc. - on the kind of issues that are important to them in the context of a new contract?