Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I thank Dr. Figueras for his presentation this morning. He notes the extent to which the crisis has achieved some positive results and he refers to the generic medicines and value based procurement. Perhaps he could speak to us a little more about that with regard to cost effective measures that could be put in place. Dr. Figueras also spoke about areas where immediate savings had to be made which did not affect the quality of our health outcomes and he made reference to low-hanging fruit as opposed to greater reform. Will he expand on, or give examples of, that? It is interesting that he noted that measures to make health care more cost effective do not often produce outcomes in the short term. Is it the case that additional expenditure is required upfront to see the benefits at the back end of the process?