Mr. Bernard Gloster:

The Deputy made a fair suggestion. In terms of identifying the most pressing matter, I refer to my opening statement. To be fair to the Minister for Health, I had several discussions with him before and since I took up this job. He has made it categorically clear that the two things we are not making enough progress with are access and the entire management of the experience of people who use urgent care services. We are making progress in the context of outcomes, as I outlined earlier, in areas such as cancer care and cardiovascular care. We are making progress in affordability albeit I accept that we have a long way to go to reach where we want to reach. We are making progress in some of the strategic parts around elective care reform and the consultant contract. Much progress has been made. Ultimately, for the experience of the patient and the public in general, the parts of the system in respect of which we are most challenged are those that have completely buckled at times. I refer here to urgent care provision in emergency departments and waiting lists. Our focus must be on those two areas.

In terms of the patient experience, regardless of process, timelines and access, we cannot take our eye off the ball when it comes to our culture as an organisation and how we interact with people at an individual level and what their experience is of us. Even if people go away knowing that they are on a waiting list or will have a wait time of three weeks, three months or whatever, we need to know about their experience of how they were supported and interacted with by health service staff, their experience of the HSE and how they felt afterward dealing with both. An important part of an organisation that is under pressure is its culture in terms of its openness to accepting and recognising for people that the service is not as good as we want it to be.