Mr. Stephen Mulvany:

I do not believe that the reconfiguration and removal of emergency care services from smaller hospital sites represented the wrong thing to do. It was Government policy. It was a policy backed up by safety concerns. To be quite frank, having managed hospital services directly, I would not reverse it. This matter is different from investing in model 2 hospitals, which has always been the intention, and enabling model 2 hospitals to provide as much safe care as they can. Expecting that we could have 29 24-7 emergency departments in a country of this size and staff them safely to meet all comers is just not a practical reality.