Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to reassure people that this was brought in by a previous Government and a previous Minister. It is not a policy supported by my Government or my party. We will have the Donal de Buitléir impact study and I have outlined what I intend to do in the interim.

On the issue of trauma, I cannot get into it too much because I have not yet brought the report to the Government. I do not see the need to do a consultation. While I believe it is important, I do not see it in any way stopping or slowing down clinical reforms which are clinician-led. I hope to bring the trauma report to the Government this year when it is published. It will involve significant clinical and patient advocacy buy-in to putting in place a trauma network which will save lives. We will follow the clinical evidence in that regard. I am happy to have a discussion about that.

On how waiting list funding will be expended, while not wishing to frustrate the process, I will have to refer it to the service planning process in terms of the detail of that which will be due out at the end of the year. I look forward to discussing that with the committee.

On the specialist register and the comments made by Rosarii Mannion in that regard, it is important that we do not want to normalise the situation, suggesting we are happy to have people who are not consultants paid as consultants and supervised by consultants. The measure suggested by Ms Mannion was an interim one. We need people to appear on the specialist register and people need to know the consultant they are seeing is a specialist. I will send the committee an update on the state of play in this regard.

I thank Deputy Murphy O'Mahony for her comments on the work done on getting the report together. On the issue of independent living, the detail will be seen in the service plan. The task force on personalised budgeting, overseen by the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, is due to complete its work this year. We will be able to have fruitful discussions about this in 2018.