Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

You will be glad to know it will be brief as always, Chairman. As far as I am concerned the big challenge currently is the budget. The current budgetary allocation is the first in recent years where extra money is available and it is being spent. We welcome that. The question is whether it will suffice. Given that we are in the higher cohort of spending among OECD countries, what measures will we put in place to try to address the issues that have caused problems such as waiting lists, overcrowding in accident and emergency departments, bed shortages and all the issues that arise from time to time? The question is also one for the HSE. What mechanism can we put in place to identify and address the problems that seem to obstruct the system? There is always a cause to which we can attribute a blockage at some stage. A system should flow freely. I know that is not the case in every country but in some countries it flows a lot more freely than here, including in countries where less is spent on the health service. There are issues we need to identify and address. Do we have a mechanism in place to do that currently? That is the crunch issue for everybody - the HSE and the health services in this country. The people are watching and they will come to a conclusion. If the system cannot deliver effectively and efficiently in a way that it has not done before then we have a problem.