John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Secretary General, the CEO and his team.

I want to address a few HSC issues first, beginning with the section 39 organisations. The Chair and I share the same constituency and we recently attended a meeting of WALK, one of the NGOs based in Tallaght which serves Dublin 24 and Dublin 12. The meeting was very well attended. A number of issues arose there. There seem to be children, teenagers and adults with special needs who qualify for a medical card and who seem to be randomly selected on an annual basis to have their details checked and to be means tested and have to go through the rigours again of whether they satisfy the criteria for the medical card.

Regarding transport, I want to mention the hoops that people have to jump through to get young children, adolescents or young adults or adolescents from A to B seem to be extraordinary. It is a cause of real frustration. There is a myriad of other issues.

One of the issues that I come across as a Deputy is that very often, the body most responsible for poaching section 39 staff is the HSE. This is a real anomaly and a serious issue. They are very angry but also very balanced and very measured people. I would like Mr. Gloster to comment on the section 39 piece and then I will address all my questions to him because I want to come back to Mr. Watt afterwards.

The last time Mr. Gloster appeared before this committee he talked about housing. It seems to me part of the workforce planning piece that one of the difficulties for nurses and other health professionals is the cost of accommodation in Dublin. As a result, attracting staff obviously has to be a key issue. Mr. Gloster mentioned how determined he was that if the Land Development Agency sought to take some HSE land that he would want to leverage that. This is a theme I want to come back to again. What progress has been made in this regard? What planning is being done and what kind of timelines and arrangements does Mr. Gloster see the HSE entering into?