Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

Section 9(2) could create a conflict in that nothing "in directions given under subsection (1) is to be construed to prevent the Council from, or to limit the Council in, performing its functions".

On patient representatives, I remind the Minister that when Professor Niamh Brennan examined the issue of reform of the health service and sought people to represent the public interest, thereby the patients, she could not find anyone to fit the bill as well as public representatives. No one else is democratically elected.

This is the difficulty of the idea of patient representatives. There are patient organisations and able people speaking on behalf of patients, but there is a danger of self-appointed people carving out a role they may fill well, badly or inappropriately and to whom the checks and balances placed on public representatives do not apply. I challenge the idea of patient representatives because it is a will o' the wisp. It is not that people could not be found to speak on behalf of patients, but there are no patient representatives to whom one could point as having been chosen for that role. This is a genuine difficulty to which I do not have a solution, but I would not use the term.

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