Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Six to nine months, okay. If we are starting in late 2024, we are talking about mid-2025. While I do not like to be too parochial about these matters at committees, I will ask for a selfish reason about CHO 9, which is an area I represent. We are not even talking about CHO 9. When we talk about the catchment areas of these CHOs, we are often talking about populations between 300,000 to 500,000, but the population of CHO 9, which covers Dublin north, north-central and north-west, is way over that. It has nearly double the population of some CHOs. We are talking about 600,000 people, perhaps. We are last on the rung. Certainly, this CHO area experiences high levels of deprivation in some areas and all the clinical complexity that comes with that. Can the witnesses speak to this? To me, an enormous population - well in excess of half a million people - are not going to be served and will not have those teams in place possibly even by 2026. I ask the witnesses to speak to that. It seems fairly galling.