Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When we are dealing with the expenditure on emergency services, I suggest we raise the issue of the National Ambulance Service with the witnesses because the two issues cannot be separated. There are real problems with the efficiency of services if ambulances are backed up outside of accident and emergency units, with patients in the ambulances for hours. That situation causes problems with how emergency services at hospitals function.

We will have an engagement with the HSE on expenditure on mental health-related services in CHO 4 and CHO 8, and a further engagement to examine its 2021 financial statements, highlighting expenditure on emergency services as an area of particular interest to the committee.

At this point we will not go much further. I suggest we pencil the HSE in somewhere because we have found the HSE is such a big gig, it is very hard to dig into the detail, and I think the committee is at one on this. I have spoken to a few members privately on it, and some of them have raised it with me, that there is a specific piece of work to be done on HSE estates, its properties, sites and what is and is not in use. The HSE is a big outfit and potentially there are a lot of loose ends there. Perhaps the committee would consider that.