Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)
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This is an interesting conversation. If we are talking about the problems of the health service in the North, we have to look at the bigger issue as to what has been happening. If you talk to someone in Liverpool about their health service, they will mention the same problems, and who will they blame them on? They will not blame them on Sinn Féin. They will blame them on the Tories, who have stripped the British health service, including services in the North. There are challenges in that regard.

It makes sense that if you are rolling out services in a particular area you have some sort of spatial idea of the cohort in the area. We have limited money, limited services and a limited number of people working within those services. The plan at the moment is to try to have those specialist services. It is a lucky hospital that has people waiting ten hours. It is not unusual for people to be waiting 30 hours. I had a meeting with Tallaght hospital just two weeks ago and we were talking about the challenges there. It is about the step-down beds, the beds within the system and so on.

We are not really here to talk to the witnesses about that; we are here to agree that there is potential for a better system. It is not this narrow "it should not be taken out of my area" view that we will hold what we have and not look at the bigger picture that will work for people. We may need data in relation to that spatial strategy, and that may not be happening. The suggestion here this morning is that if we were to look specifically at the shared island unit, that would help. Maybe that is a recommendation to be made. It does not take away from the 62 pieces of research that are there. Maybe we will park that.

Within the current system, there is a lot not working. As the health committee, we visited Altnagelvin. If you have a heart attack or cancer, it works for people in that cohort. There is the specialist system there. It does not work, however, if people have to do their follow-up in Galway or pass the hospital to do that. That is something people do. I went to Daisy Hill and they were saying that the theatre there is not working two or three days a week. The worry there is that the hospital will close, which would impact that whole region. This does not happen just to people north of the Border. We have a resource there. We have the staff to resource the theatres where we do not in the South. There are children on waiting lists. One thing that popped out at me was the number of children looking for oral health. There are theatres there that could be used for that.

If this is going to work at all, we need to combine our efforts and look at what we have and what would work. Perhaps the finances are here but the staff are there. We all know that health issues do not stop at an imaginary border. This is cross-Border stuff so we need to work together on it. I think that is the approach. Do the witnesses agree?