Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State for her comprehensive reply. There is a positive in this in the acknowledgement that there are reasonable X-ray facilities available between the Mater hospital, the rapid access clinic at Smithfield and Beaumont Hospital. I am not asking the Minister of State to give firm commitments today but she might consider whether this expensive equipment could be incorporated into the roll-out of primary care centres. In an area where there is a deficiency of X-ray facilities to GPs, the machine could, perhaps by way of a lease arrangement, be pressed into service. It might even be given as a gift from the State to the State as part of its regional primary care programme. Every option must be considered to ensure this machine is plugged in and used for the benefit of the citizens who do not have access to X-ray services on a walk-in basis. The last thing we need is for this issue to be brought before the Committee of Public Accounts and tied up for ages in discussions about what went wrong while the machine remains idle in Ballymun.

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