Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha:

In my opinion, all those who work in the system view it positively. They believe it is the correct strategy. Therefore, it has to come back to funding. It has to come back to having an annual budget, but a ten-year plan. Every year, in October or November, one is making one's prebudget submission to the HSE and one may or may not get the money. That will dictate how much of the strategy one can deliver in the next year. It is not a capital plan. We are talking about a day-to-day spend. This year we went to the launch of the HSE's service plan and we were told that we were going to have to find savings of €320 million. How does that marry with a service modernisation and a service development? Yearly service planning is a huge impediment. One of the good things about the Sláintecare report was that it promoted multi-annual service planning.