Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank our witnesses for appearing before the committee and giving us their respective reports. That is a very useful starting point. I am a little concerned about the direction in which we tend to go at some of these meetings because it would appear that the Government seems to be in some way blocking or impeding progress in terms of delivering much-needed services to a very vulnerable group in society. I want to state emphatically that is not the case. The Minister is fully conversant with the issues, but the issue that is arising now is different. I have a number of questions on it.

If we attempt to fund all the organisations and the country itself by way of public acclamation, we will soon be back in the place we were in 2008 but only worse. That is an issue we need to take on board and learn carefully from it. The question we must ask ourselves is whether we want to be back where we were in 2008, nationally bankrupt. We do not, because we will not get salvation from any quarter the next time, it will be our own fault fundamentally and we will be left with it. We need to bear that in mind.

I used to be a member of a health board for a very long time. How do the service providers see themselves? Do they see themselves as being contracted to provide a service? Who is contracting the contacting body? Is it the Department of Health, the HSE, both or something in between? I would like an answer to that question.