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

We will struggle on and see how we manage. I would like to raise a couple of points before I bring in members. Professor Pollock has stressed that legislation is necessary to put a duty on the Minister for Health of the day to provide universal health care. I suppose the challenge for us is to work out how we get from where we are now - with a disjointed two-tier hospital-centric system - to a point where we can recommend a particular course of action. Given that the Irish health system is so hospital-centric, does Professor Pollock believe we should seek to change the model of care to move activity from the hospital to the community before we legislate for a basket of services to which people would have a legal entitlement, or does she think both sides of the equation can be done simultaneously? Does Professor Pollock think we should concentrate on providing a legal entitlement to community and primary care services-----