Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Okay, fine. Both organisations stress the importance of prevention. I admitted recently that we as a committee have not spent an awful lot of time on prevention. It is probably because of the fact there is crisis in so many aspects of the health service and we tend to deal with the crisis stuff rather than the longer-term stuff that could make a real difference. We also discussed yesterday, at our own meeting, that it is our intention to have the alliance in sometime early in the new year to put the case to us about the commercial determinants of health. It would be the committee's intention to invite the Minister of State with responsibility for health promotion. We have not had her at the committee since she was appointed. We hope to have a session that will concentrate on the whole prevention area.

Mr. O'Donnell made the point about the huge distinction between public and private services. With regard to public services, is the difficulty that there is not adequate funding or is it that there are not adequate staff because we cannot get staff? Which is the bigger problem?