Ms Martina Queally:

It is a significant opportunity not just for the regions, but for the health service nationally. One of the big challenges and opportunities for us is the integration of services between the hospital and the community and across regions. The Senator is absolutely right; certain national programmes will have centres of excellence that will be required to provide services nationally. One of the opportunities for us is to maintain and make sure that we honour that requirement. Similarly, there is a great opportunity to completely optimise our services. The CEO spoke about GPs working very closely with emergency departments and residential care. Completely optimising the service across hospital and community care is a big opportunity but also a challenge. Restoring and increasing public confidence in our services across some of the areas the Senator spoke about through cross-departmental work between Tusla, the HSE and disability services is part of a programme of work that all six REOs will be addressing. There will be a strength in six people coming together to address some of these challenges nationally. We can make an absolute hero of our size here in Ireland. We have a really well-educated and dedicated workforce working in all of the regions. There is a really significant opportunity in our hands. That is really what Ms Killeen White and all six REOs intend to do to maximise all opportunities available to us, of which there are many.