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

I will be as brief as I can, but this is an expansive subject. My questions are directed at all of the delegates.

The programme for Government gives a commitment to the establishment of a performance management unit. What are the delegates' views in that regard? Do they think it would have a chance of working or would it just be like the special delivery unit and not deliver anything special or otherwise?

On the conversion of agency staff, the first two submissions mentioned the need to recruit additional staff as being central to the creation of more capacity within the system. I have questioned the Minister on this several times, and I am interested to hear from those at the coal face how the job of converting agency staff into directly employed staff is working. It is obviously cheaper to employ direct staff. Is the spare money being used to employ additional staff?

On the bed capacity review, have any of the organisations represented here been involved in that? I understand that it is under way at the moment. I would appreciate a comment on how the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, is able to identify that there are a minimum of 150 beds available and yet the Government says we need to have a bed capacity review.

On primary care, there are separate budgets. We have heard this from the HSE many times. The budgets for the acute services and primary services are kept separate. How willing is the system to give up some of the budget in the acute sector in order to fund the primary care sector? How are we going to bridge that gap? To use the phrase that Professor Drumm used to use, everybody is in a big silo. Until people start talking to each other we are not going to be able to see very much progress.

My final question is specifically for ICTU. Special measures was mentioned twice at point number eight. Will ICTU elaborate on the special measures envisaged, and the timeframe for implementing them? What is the ambition for the outcome? If the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, came in here and granted the special measures, what are they? Will ICTU tell us? How soon are they going to have an effect in terms of bodies physically present and working on the front line?