Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses. I will reiterate what a lot of people have said, which is it is rare enough to come across something that we know how it works and how it should work so let us just do it. I will do a rare thing which I do not usually do at committee meetings which is talk about my own area. I would like to unpack a little because it is useful to start with a community health organisation, CHO, and see what the issues on the ground are. If we could start with what it would take in terms of CHO 9. CHO 9 is a larger CHO than many of them. That is Dublin. It is a larger population. The witnesses said that most CHOs are 300,000 to 400,000 but CHO 9 is 600,000 people. Some of the opening statement is quite arresting in that much of the population does not have access to neurorehabilitation. Will the witnesses talk about what they expect to see in rolling the strategy out in a larger area like CHO 9? What do they envisage the challenges to be in terms of staffing it? What would they expect the HSE to raise as concerns? Also, I spoke to somebody recently about rolling out GP services in deprived areas and how one of the things that is a barrier and presents a challenge is that there are higher clinical needs. There is a higher requirement for services because when people live in deprived situations or lower income households, they tend to have poorer outcomes in terms of health. Will the witnesses unpack a little about the challenges of CHO 9 for me and about what the failure to roll out the implementation would mean on the ground?