Dr. Catherine Day:

Perhaps I can address three of those points and then others may want to come in as well. Regarding the first point on whether the Department and the HSE regard the critical friend of the voluntary sector as a threat in some way, I cannot speak for them. Let me take the question in a different way. In our report we state that one of the strengths and one of the positive contributions of the voluntary sector is its ability to advocate, champion and say uncomfortable things. We felt that was important in a democracy. Those who work in the public sector are not free to criticise public policy. I cannot remember the exact wording we used, but we stated that the role of non-governmental organisations, NGOs, and the voluntary sector in this particular case is necessary to keep challenging the system to deliver the best that it can deliver.

Turning to the second point, the other European Union countries we looked at included France, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands and Belgium, among others. A European Observatory on Health Systems and Polices exists and gathers much comparative data which is very useful in looking at how other European countries are doing this. We all know that there is no country on earth that does not have problems in its health sector. We are not stating that everybody else has got it right and we do not. We are stating that there are interesting things to learn from what others are doing in this area. I hope that what comes through from our report is that there are problems but that they are fixable. That should be our goal. We should be trying to find a way to bring the parties together to fix these problems.