Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The budgets are the key but so too is accountability for services. The HSE is a command and control organisation. I have stated in the context of Covid that there should be a separate agency for testing and tracing. It is so centralised. The idea of Mr. Paul Reid being called on to answer to problems in west County Kerry or north County Donegal just does not make any sense and leads to dysfunction. There has to be devolved management to the regions where the many well-paid managers within the HSE will have a legal responsibility for the provision of services and to achieve those services at the best value for money. That will not be done if the budgets and the management structure are separate. We need to make progress on that. I accept that many different things are going on but we cannot lose sight of that. There is also the implementation office, which we should give the go-ahead. We should get Mr. Reid to pull back on what he announced earlier in the year in regard to the delay.