Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On some of the other issues, the opening hours of the MRI scanner are a matter for local hospital management but as the Chairman referenced, there is a point about looking at the two scanners in the totality.

On the issue of the elective hospitals, the realistic timeframe is about four years.

We can look at how we can tighten that - perhaps through standard designs and the like for the three - but we are not yet at that stage it is true. I have never suggested that these are things that can be done today or tomorrow. They are very much a key part of Sláintecare, which is a ten-year plan. I hope that they will be delivered during the first half of the implementation of Sláintecare. We would have a much better outlook regarding what they will constitute - sites and the like - by the first quarter of next year.

The Chairman's point about inpatient day cases versus outpatients is valid. It is one we have discussed quite regularly and one that the NTPF, the HSE and the Department are eager to move on in 2020. Patients do not differentiate between the outpatient and the inpatient nor should they. If I have a problem with my eye, I need to see a consultant. When I see the consultant, I might need a cataract operation or whatever. That is the wait, that is the total time. The question is whether we can put in place a system that takes someone through the entire process and whether the NTPF can help fund that whole journey, in other words, taking somebody through the outpatient clinic, to having the procedure done and out the other end? The way we differentiate between outpatients and inpatients is not the way real life works for people.

There are very exciting proposals, with which the Chairman will be familiar, regarding community ophthalmology and a view that a lot more can be done in that context. In the context of that specialty and half a dozen others to which I referred in my opening statement, we can press "go" on a few in 2020. That would make a significant difference.

I am not sure whether Ms O'Connor answered the question about community diagnostics in the mid-west and whether GPs know how to access community diagnostics under the winter plan.