Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

She broadened it slightly. The Competition Authority exists to ensure anti-competitive practices are exposed and dealt with. If a probe is taking place at the moment we will see what its outcome is as there is always a fear that such fraud may occur, despite the best efforts of the OPW, which works on these matters in good faith.

The purpose of these health reforms is to recognise that the current situation is not sustainable in terms of the country's demographics. There is a need to reorganise services and the commitment in our social partnership programmes is to deconstruct current services and reconstruct them around the requirements of citizens. The challenge to social partnership in this regard is great and I welcome the health forum as the means by which this can be addressed in the spirit of social partnership. I hope that the work that has begun will show fruit quickly.

One of the health service's problems is its ability to work within the budgets allocated to it. Under the law it is required to devise service plans consistent with the allocation it has received. We know from the areas of health, education and social welfare that people find what they believe are good ways of spending large budgets. As a former Minister for Health and Children, I can say that, in the interests of a sustainable reformed health service that meets the basic requirements of our people, we need budgetary discipline in this area, perhaps more than any other. The alternative is the possible dislocation of services, due to a failure to work within allocated budgets, that displaces future expenditure.

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