Professor Damian McCormack:

Okay, here is a quick fix. Hip dysplasia is a big problem. Two years ago, over the summer I suggested to Temple Street hospital management that if they gave me a theatre on a Saturday, I would work for nothing. I asked them to pay the nurses to work for the Saturday morning so we could work on ten or 11 kids. It took a good chief executive officer at the time, Ms Mona Baker, to say "yes" and it happened. Every Saturday over the summer I went in and operated on what I think were nine children each morning. It was as many as we would do in a month otherwise. That little bit of a waiting list was dealt with. The nurses loved it because they were incentivised and that incentive was very simple. The nurses were paid until 5 p.m., along with the anaesthetist. If we worked hard and cut out all the bullshit, we would get the work done by 2 p.m. and that is exactly what happened. Everybody was delighted and went home at 2 p.m. having done a good day's work.

This was amazing because in the public sector for the first time in my experience in Temple Street hospital, on a Saturday morning we cut through work just like it was a private operation. For a second year I asked the same for the summer months and we did it but there was some resistance. Nurses were given vouchers. There was some detail about not being able to pay nurses extra or whatever. The bureaucracy hit us in the face but we did it. For the third year, which was last year, it did not happen. There was too much bureaucracy. The chief executive was gone and there was a layer of managers so it just did not happen because of the bureaucracy. That is a quick fix.

Another example is that of the four theatres available in Temple Street hospital, three close on a Saturday and Sunday. We have all this intense debate all week but on Friday afternoon people just go home and it is the weekend. I stopped believing in Santa and God a long time ago and I have no problem working on Sunday all day. Why not? We have the infrastructure but it is closed two days from seven. For God's sake - if there was a God - could we not just open the theatres and let us do some work? It should not take that much but trying to get that through the bureaucratic management structure is impossible. Maybe members could help with that. We could give people working over the weekend Monday and Tuesday off or pay them a little extra. It would not cost €2.5 billion to use those two or three theatres over a weekend.