Mr. Bernard O'Regan:

With regard to the timely engagement of the different stakeholders, the service providers, the regulators and the HSE in responding to needs, undoubtedly the impact of regulation has been quite significant on services over recent years and Mr. O'Donnell has alluded to this already. Another reality is that the HSE has itself been going through quite a significant restructuring and redesign. Part of that has been the development of some new structures at local level to try to bring together the service providers and the HSE. This is at the very early stages and some of those committees are only having their first meetings now. It could certainly be hoped that this might provide a structure for timely and effective planning and responding to the issues that arise. If there is an inspection by HIQA of a service that points to significant issues - such as the examples given by Mr. O'Donnell where a building upgrade might be required at significant cost - sometimes the only way this could be addressed is through a collaborative approach with the HSE. There must be mechanisms to be able to engage with the HSE to try to prioritise that work within the limits of the budgets available to the executive.

I hope that some of the committees and structures that are forming will help to grow the kind of speedy interaction to which the Senator referred.