Ms Aisling Moran:

I thank the Deputy for his questions and for the information he provided. There is huge potential with e-health. One of the best documents that has come out of Government in recent years is the 2017 document on primary care on the islands which was produced after a huge HSE consultation. It has been slow in its delivery. However, on the west Cork islands, a health forum has been set up by the HSE and there is movement on that. The areas that we are focusing with the west Cork islands are e-health and emergency management planning. This touches on one of the other topics raised by the Deputy, namely, fragmentation. We seem to be moving at a bit of a quicker pace than some of the other regions. As Comhdháil Oileáin na hÉireann, we would like to see all islands move forward and progress on these kind of issues at an equal level and pace. One of the things that is so good about the primary care document is that the consultation was very detailed. A consultant was sent out to each island and an implementation plan was also developed. There seems to be a budget to back up what they are doing at the moment. We welcome the progress made on e-health. As the Deputy has said, it will make a difference in areas such as prescriptions and ways of delivering different services. One of the concerns of islanders is that the e-health programme should not replace the local nurse or doctor. It never can. The HSE has stated that the nurses and doctors need to be physically present indefinitely. However, e-health can offer a greater range of services to the islanders.

On the issue of fragmentation, in terms of the housing, it is a new and welcome idea. These conversations are good for us gaining information from the members' knowledge in terms of a vacant housing officer post and also in terms of the Town Centre First policy.

Maybe we can look at creating an island centre first document or some way of adapting that to suit the islands' needs. We are very grateful for that and will take it away and touch base with the committee afterwards.

We saw through the Leader programme that when the islands are treated together, we do really well. There are nuances but a programme dealing with all the islands together works well. In previous Leader programmes there was a dedicated lot for the islands and we saw great delivery and a high level of funding drawn down. Unfortunately in the last Leader programme these lots were broken up into regions with different county councils. Luckily for three of the islands a company that dealt specifically with islands won the tender but in one of them it did not. It broke up the funding and the islands did not access as much money. We are requesting a single lot for the upcoming Leader programme. We have seen that it works better in every area, be it agriculture, marine or housing, if the islands are dealt with solely by a specific person who gets a better understanding of it. The same is true for the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, which is delivered on the Cork islands. It is a great programme. It is not a high level of funding but it definitely increases the standard of living really well, giving additional access to education and programmes that enhance quality of life. An islands SICAP programme or lot would be very welcome. If we can keep things together for all of the islands we do a little bit better out of it. We may not have looked into applying that to housing. We never know what will come out of the report but it is something we need to consider and I welcome Deputy Ó Cathasaigh's thought on it.