David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree with some of that. When Paul Reid entered his role and first talked about productivity, one of his first acts was to send out letters to hospital managers on all these things. The Minister might have been a health spokesperson at the time, although I do not believe he was. The letters stated the HSE was to clamp down on bad spending and so on, but it did not happen. Of course, I welcome the fact there is now a focus on this and that the Minister says he will apply more political pressure or heat, but there should have been a focus all the way through. I am just saying that it looks very peculiar that the two people asked to head the task force are the two whose job it should be to do what it is tasked with.

Regarding a cultural shift, the task force's remit should be part and parcel of the daily work of the two senior people who work in the health service. They should not need to be part of a task force. To deliver, they should be cracking the whip, and this should be an obvious part of their work.

I want to move on to service delivery. The Chair mentioned the trip to Altnagelvin Hospital in the North. Staff in its cardiac unit, which has 24-7 PPCI and treats patients from Letterkenny, Donegal and other parts of the South, made the point that without patients from the South, they would provide neither the cancer services nor the cardiac services they provide. They are really grateful for the funding they get from the South through the service level agreement. They stated secondary care for some of their cardiac patients could actually be provided at Altnagelvin but that patients pass the hospital to go to Galway and Letterkenny. The staff presented a very detailed business case a year ago or more to the Taoiseach, who they said was on a visit, but they have not heard anything back. They were not being critical, to be fair to them; they were simply asking whether the committee could follow it up. They said the requirement would be in the region of €700,000 or €800,000, mainly for staff to deal with secondary unrelated illnesses that affect their cancer and cardiac patients. I believe it was the cardiac unit that raised this with us. It stated it would send us the business case and asked us to follow up. It seems the amount of money requested is not huge in the overall scheme of health expenditure. If it improved the services, it would be beneficial. Can the Minister review the business case favourably and ensure the unit will get a response? If the business case was sent to the Taoiseach's office, I assume it was sent to the Department of Health but maybe it was not. Could we just ensure that this is cleared up and clarified, that the unit will get a response and that we will consider the request favourably?