Ms Susan Clyne:

I can answer on behalf of the IMO. We have been supporting short, medium and long-term plans for many years. Unfortunately, the funding has not accompanied those plans. Regardless of whether one is a supporter of Sláintecare, it does not have the funding to accompany those plans. We are stating, however, that there are things we can do in this crisis. We do not need another plan, we need to see action on contingency and building of capacity.

We also need to see action regarding manpower resources in hospitals. We have to state as well that we have been hearing much from the system about shifting care into the community and into general practice. That is good, where it can happen and where it is resourced. We need a great deal of joined-up thinking now to get things moving. Working with colleagues in management, the HSE and the Department of Health, staff showed during this crisis how agile and flexible they were and how they adapted to new ways of working. That was done, however, in the context of a crisis and it was not evaluated as to how it is going to work in the long term and what new supports need to be put in place for that to happen. I ask Dr. McCauley to talk about the shifting of care to the community and how that could happen in the next several months.