David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Kearns. His opening statement is music to our ears. Everything he said has been said by us for some time. At our first session on RHAs, many of the arguments made by Mr. Kearns in his opening statement were made by us to the head of the Department and the head of the HSE at the time.

I will discuss some of the points made by Mr. Kearns in his opening statement and juxtapose them with what the Cabinet signed off on for regional health authorities. I will then tease out what flexibilities might be there. In his opening statement, Mr. Kearns said a key issue at the heart of the RHA implementation is a belief that the current centralised and hierarchical governance approach to the health service needs to be fundamentally and radically changed. Does belief in this principle exist at the top of the HSE?