Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair, and I thank the Minister of State for her opening statement. One of the bugbears of this committee is access. The first paragraph of the Minister of State's statement mentions access and the fact it poses a challenge. I like the line in the statement that says "Services are based on needs rather than diagnosis to optimise access". I welcome that, because we had an issue with that over the years, in that it always seemed to based more on somebody's means rather than their needs. Will the Minister of State elaborate, even briefly, on that part of phase 1 and part 2 of the pilot project. CHO 4 is my area. The Minister of State also mentioned "sourcing therapy assessments and interventions externally via private service providers". Will she tell us which providers they are or what it is costing?

It seems to come across in a lot of the health service stuff here that we have an issue with staffing and an issue with recruitment and retention, yet if you can flash the cash, you have no problem getting people in to assist, so I am just curious as to who these external private service providers are.

That is about it. Again, I thank the Minister of State for coming in today. As I said, it is nice to have her present because we have put a lot of work into this with the whole committee secretariat and everyone else, so it is nice to get that acknowledgment.

I kept it under the five minutes, definitely.