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

A broad level of services are anticipated. We get complaints from time to time, generally from the services’ users. Some users are very pleased, some are not pleased, but all of them have different requirements. This is where the difficulty arises. It is difficult to deliver a daily service across a dispersed area with a high degree of quality to people with different needs. For instance, some people who are isolated in rural or urban areas might put it on the long finger, but having a tea and a chat is a very important service to them. A ten-minute chat would be fine in such cases, but there are also people who require a great deal of care and more than five or six minutes. How does the Department differentiate between the two levels of service required? How does it tell the service provider where to go and what levels are required for patients A, B, C and D? We have to determine the optimum number of persons who can be provided with a service in a particular area and by how many people. What has the Department in mind in this regard?