Mr. Paul Bell:

I thank the Chairman. Deputy Louise O'Reilly raised a very important point about community care, especially in the area of home helps. In the ICTU document, we seek that the HSE or the statutory provider of health care is the employer of choice so that people will want to have a career in the delivery of public health services. Unfortunately, time does not permit me to develop this further, except to say that the WHO has made it clear that by the year 2030, there will be a 40 million shortage of health professionals throughout the globe. That will obviously affect Ireland on the basis of the demographics.

A point I wanted to expand on, but disappointingly it is not possible, is the unsavoury practice to which the Chairman referred whereby there are various issues arising from contracts of public and private provision. We have a concern about the development of radiography services in the community, as we would have seen in Athlone, where there is a HSE facility. We are concerned that advantage is being taken of the difficulties experienced by public health services in trying to recruit health professionals or fund the capital expenditure.

I will now defer to my colleague, Mr. Eamonn Donnelly.