Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

Every sector of the health services wants assurances that things will not change, but we have no choice but to try and change the way we deliver services, because budgets are being cut. This is a reality with which we must all live and we must work within those constraints. This means we must try to get better value for money from the services we provide and closely examine how we spend money to ensure that we achieve savings where there is a potential for making them. We must also ensure we keep the focus on the front line services and end users or clients. It is about the clients, not about the organisations, salaries for management or so on. The focus must be on the end user. The challenge for all of us is to maintain the level and quality of services we have as far as possible, but to do that in a flexible way because of the reduced budgets.

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