Mr. Aaron Mullaniff:

The vision for better and improved eye care in this country is set out in the HSE's plan for ophthalmology published in 2017, which was the same year as the primary eye care services review. Essentially, the finding from that review was that 70% of activity taking place in acute hospitals should not be there and should be in the community. That has been followed up by Sláintecare, which has funded a number of waitlist initiatives. Vision Ireland is willing to act as the conduit, vehicle or glue to bring the acute primary community together. We are finding we are reverse engineering our services. Putting our services back into an acute setting or trying to put our services into a primary care setting is actually making things worse. We have to unlearn what we are currently doing.

The key thing that would be different within the strategy is the focus we would particularly place on prevention. As I said, prevention is the best medicine. There is a fear in this country where people do not want to get their eyes checked. They put that screening to the back of their minds when, on a very basic level, they can all get free eye checks every two years if they are paying PRSI. We would look to go out on significant campaigns, including screening campaigns, to go back to the question asked by Senator Conway, where we would look at those most common conditions that are rapidly on the increase, especially glaucoma. Some 50% of people who have glaucoma do not realise they have it. It is the most rapid form of blindness-----