Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is but we are not there yet because it is very much tied in with Sláintecare. We will publish the first Sláintecare action plan around Christmas. I will bring it to the Cabinet in December. That will obviously outline the actions we are going to take then.

There is a significant body of work which the Sláintecare team needs to do working out the contractual implications of the report for many different healthcare professionals, of which consultants will be one group. We are not yet ready to have that conversation about what the consultant role in the future will look like.

We will depend on the Donal de Buitléir group as well which was established to look at how to decouple private practice in public hospitals. This is a point about which I feel strongly. I do not believe it is appropriate that private practice is happening in public hospitals. I do not have an issue with private practice or an issue with people in private practice. The choice of playing golf or engaging in private practice is not my business. It is engaging private practice in public hospitals which irks me. That is what I am hoping the Donal de Buitléir group will help us with.

I am not sure what the Deputy meant about appointments happening without clarity to the boards of hospital trusts. Any appointment to a hospital group has gone through the Public Appointments Service. I populated all of those boards in recent months. All of the appointments were made via the Public Appointments Service. The Deputy is correct that they only exist in an administrative capacity and do not have a basis in law. I took the decision when Sláintecare was published not to push ahead with legislating for the hospital groups for two reasons. First, I am not sure I command a Dáil majority to do it. Second, Sláintecare has moved us to a different space because it rightly talks about these integrated care entities whereby one would have CHOs and groups, effectively over time, aligned and one would legislate for that.

I will bring forward proposals on geoalignment in the coming months and will then move to legislate for those bodies rather than doing so for hospital groups and having to come back and do it again.