Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

There are no more layers than there were before the establishment of the executive. The intention is to devolve to a greater extent to the four networks and to ensure services are reconfigured in a way that makes sense, not only on the hospital side but also on the community side. A substantial amount of work has gone into that. As I see it, the initial focus of the redundancy scheme will relate to administration management, not only within the Health Service Executive but within many of the hospitals. There are 13 or 14 chief executive officers of hospitals in Dublin city alone. In addition, there are the various human resources departments, finance directors, deputy chief executive officers and so on. One would never organise any system in that way. The manner in which we have organised services has led to large numbers of people in administration and management. Operating on the basis of networks of hospitals should deliver greater efficiency in this regard.

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