Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

The underspend in primary care the Deputy has identified is essentially from not recruiting for primary care. This is the exact difficulty with the focus on inputs, which nearly always goes to acute and not primary care. What will change with this different distribution is the region will be able to recruit based on what it needs to do. It is very clear primary care therapies are not being delivered. The CEO has made a specific intervention regarding primary care therapies for physio, occupational therapy and speech and language but the distribution is uneven.

It has also been the case in the past that money has been moved out of community to meet acute need. We are going to make sure that, from this year onwards, that is no longer allowed and that money can move from acute to community but never from community to acute. That has been to the detriment of delivering primary care services and community services in the first instance. I hope that is one of the benefits of the change we are about to make.

Is that sufficient or should I ask Ms McGirr to speak further to it?