Dr. Sara Burke:

They were key. Again, they were an issue the committee spent a lot of time on. We realised we had to have them. Some sub-national structure was needed to allocate resources on the basis of need. We do not do that at all at the moment. Dr. Johnston has done work on population-based resource allocation, so she may want to come in on that. It was a mechanism for that and a mechanism for governance and accountability so we stop having the command-and-control centralised structure we currently have, and also for the delivery of integrated care. It would acknowledge that different regions would want to provide care in different ways, because if you are doing it in Donegal it is very different to doing it in Dublin or Cork. The regions are essential to that delivery.