Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)

Does the Minister agree there is a lack of corporate oversight and governance on the board of the HSE given that officials are now overseeing their own work at board level? That could be a cause of concern, particularly in the HSE.

In regard to proposals to subsume the agency back into the Department, will this result in a large reduction in the number of staff currently employed in the latter?

Now that the election is over, we can park what the Minister has previously said regarding the HSE but in more recent discussions on the numbers of people on hospital trolleys and the delivery of primary care units he clearly stated he did not believe the figures set out by the HSE and did not trust its counts of patients on trolleys or primary care units. They are issues about which many people have concerns.

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