Dr. Tom Ryan:

Yes. Let us deal with the OECD data again. A publication was highlighted in the media from 2016 which looked at outcomes in the health care system. Importantly, we are all living longer and in the past ten or 15 years our life expectancy has increased by approximately five years. The OECD commented that the Irish health care system seemed to be particularly good at dealing with life-threatening problems but had a problem in dealing with commonplace issues which generated waiting lists. As such, the lack of capacity and consultants generates waiting lists. There are very few consultants who are not working in excess of their contracted hours. Those who work in excess of them manage to prop up the whole system, given that we have far fewer consultants than most other OECD countries. As late as last week, there was another OECD document looking at the proportion of specialists in each country. We have the lowest number of specialists in Ireland as a proportion of the overall number of doctors compared to every other OCED country. Only 40% of doctors here are specialists, whereas 60% are generalists. Most other OCED countries have the inverse proportions.