Mr. Mark O'Donnell:

I think the stroke strategy itself is a very honest document in that it makes clear that it does not contain all the answers and there are other longer term solutions. It is a medium-term document.

In terms of the funding piece, there is no doubt there will be significant impacts for patients who will feel the brunt of that. One of the fundamental problems we have with strategies, whether it is the national stroke strategy or a national cardiovascular health strategy, is that we are looking at multi-annual strategies with very complex service delivery but on a 12-month budget cycle.

That just does not work and it never will. There needs to be funding that is ring-fenced and on a multi-annual basis to support these plans and to enable the people who need to do their jobs to go and plan these services with some certainty about funding and resources. We are in regular contact with the clinicians, particularly in Galway, and there are posts there that are absolutely essential and that it now seems will not be filled. These are posts such as therapy assistants, speech and language therapists, and essential services for post-stroke rehab and support that were needed in the first place. There was a deficit there in terms of those roles and now that situation will be further exacerbated by the funding issues.