Dr. John O'Brien:

The Senator is asking how the legislators can help with regard to the implementation of this service in as expeditious a way as possible. I think the members are all pretty well focused on that from their comments today. The areas that do need attention are those of the framework within which all this will operate. That is a planning issue to do with the HSE and the Department of Health. It will also be important that this is sufficiently resourced; ring-fencing of the resources has been mentioned already. There is also a whole question around capacity and actually providing the people, equipment, buildings and beds to deliver this service both in primary care and within the hospital system itself. The guidelines are moving along very nicely but once again the legislation is important in order that the guidelines map to the legislation. We need to know what this will look like so we can map the guidelines to what there is. It is an iterative process.

We spoke earlier about getting everybody in the room. That is something the members could possibly promote as well. Apart altogether from ourselves - we have been in the room - the people who have not been in the room are those in general practice, who will discuss terms. There is a need to discuss how that piece of it will work and to address funding going into general practice. General practitioners are outside of the normal HSE structure and they will have to be brought in as well.