Mr. Bernard Gloster:

I think there are scales of challenge in that.

Very often, including with regard to RHAs, we talk about integration with other agencies like local authorities and domestic violence providers and so on. One of the biggest challenges, ironically, and I am sure the Senator has encountered this in her own work, is integration within the HSE itself. As we specialise, we silo. It is an automatic challenge. You have to specialise to get the exactness for what people's needs are but you have to rise to a different bar to not become a silo, to be integrated. It is a real challenge within the health service itself. At interagency level, my focus for RHAs is on building co-operation across communities and communities having a large say in how they support themselves, as well as how the State supports them. I do not know if the Secretary General wants to comment on interdepartmental co-operation. There is increasingly significant work now going on, for example between the Departments of Health and Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on issues affecting both the health of children and the social care needs of children. I am speaking at a conference tomorrow on health and housing and the connections between them and the importance of health as a social determinant or housing as a social determinant of health. A lot of integration goes on but there is no doubt that we are all challenged because we are so challenged by our own responsibilities that it is very hard to see beyond them at times.