Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

I am not certain that proofing every policy would deliver the types of result the Deputy anticipates. Currently, every memorandum that goes to the Government must be gender proofed, poverty proofed, competitiveness proofed and North-South proofed. There is a considerable amount of proofing. We also conduct regulatory impact assessments of all new policies and legislation. We must bring much of this together.

We have universal access to hospitals. We do not have universal access to primary care free of charge and the hospitals apply a small charge. The issue with hospitals is the length of time it takes to access services. A central feature of the new consultants' contract is that access to diagnostic services for consultants' outpatients is to be on the basis of medical need and nothing else. The resource allocation group, which is examining in an in-depth and robust way the manner in which we allocate resources not only to hospitals, but between hospitals and community care and so on, will provide us with good insights into this matter.

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