Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the motion that was read out earlier. That is absolutely it. The only addition I would make is for the specific areas I mentioned and any other area similarly affected in order to ensure nothing is left out. Mention was made earlier to the new philosophy regarding Sláintecare. We spent a lot of time in this committee trying to ensure that representation for the regions was recognised. This is a classic case where recognition of the regions did not happen and they are slow to be recognised still. This might be the answer to some of the questions we were asking earlier. A number of us were members of the old Eastern Health Board, where there was always an argument about this. The further away from the centre of power you went, the less influence you had and that was shown up in the statistics afterwards. I do not know how well the system that was eventually agreed is working but there was resistance to the need, as we saw it, for representation for the regions. That is in the board now. It is there. I do not know to what extent it is effective. At this stage, only time will test that. If would have been better if they were actually placed in the regions where they would know exactly what was going on. A mini board in each of the regions would be in a better position to assess the thing.

I am sorry for interrupting the speaker previously but I will say one thing. There is a tendency nowadays to attribute everything to bad government or government failure and so on and so forth. That is fine, that is politics and that is the way it goes. However, when these things are attributed to a party or parties in order to explain away the situation and say that all will be resolved when there is a change of government, that is politics and that is open to contradiction. That is for us to do to the Opposition, and those in the Opposition can and will do the same. Politics is not always an explanation for the resolution of a particular problem. In the older days here, nobody would get into the second sentence and they were pulled because of the difference between statistics, resolution and politics. Anybody can make politics out of any situation but it does not always address the situation. What I want to say is that we understand what the situation was. If we look at FEMPI, it is still not resolved in many cases even though it was supposed to be. There are throwback situations that are unfortunate and should not be and our job is to try to resolve them in the shortest possible time, while taking into account the really serious and fundamental issues such as the ones referred to by the witnesses.