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

The Minister has made much of the fact that there were serious pressures on the health service last year, and many this year too, in fairness, in respect of the impact of Covid-19. That is a reasonable thing to say about last year, even though the people who were charged with doing the detailed planning for regionalisation were different people. They were not involved in the response to Covid-19 at all. Whatever about last year, then, on 12 May this year the Minister launched the Sláintecare Strategy and Action Plan 2021-2023.

What was contained in that plan was that progress would be made on the development of the business case and submission to Government in quarter 2 this year, there would be detailed scoping of the process for the regionalisation plan in quarter 3 and quarter 4 would involve commencing implementation of RHAs and change management programme in line with the Government decision. In May 2021, the Minister announced that the Government had decided to go ahead with regionalisation and set out a clear timescale for quarter 4 this year, which we are now into. The Government was to commence implementation. What happened between May and now?