Mr. Jim Breslin:

We talk about dozens of things that either are being developed by the Department in order to improve the health services or are issues arising in the health services. As the chief medical officer, CMO, has outlined, the first objective that officials within the Department have is to engage with the HSE on an issue and check out whether the issue being dealt with is a good issue. If the HSE is going to do something bad, try to stop it; if it is not prepared to stop it, escalate it; and if it is a good thing, support it, see are there any issues in it and manage the situation. On occasion - the CMO has outlined them - we absolutely do escalate issues. We have escalated dozens and dozens of issues. We go in. We find an issue with a service. We actually have to close the service down. We have to move something. We work with the HSE on this all of the time.