Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The service that is provided is in excess of the service plan agreed at the beginning of the year. That service planning is crucial if one is to apply resources properly and ensure every area of the health service is funded to meet the basic requirements. Patient safety is of the highest priority. We have an industrial relations framework, through the Croke Park agreement, that will see negotiated change across a range of areas to ensure the people who work in the health service provide the best possible service for the funds available for health in the coming years. That must be accelerated and done as quickly as possible. On the basis of the Estimates and the allocation of resources to various parts of the health service that will emerge in the budgetary process, the talks at local level can work. We have already seen practical examples where it has happened, where nursing staff have moved from Croom and Ennis into Limerick General Hospital in order to meet the requirements. In the absence of an industrial relations framework that might never have happened.

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