Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will deal with the last fantasy first. I never threatened to resign and I never would; that is not what I do. I have a job to do and I intend to do it, despite the fact there is so much opposition to the implementation of A Vision for Change. I have found in the past two years that everybody is in favour of that plan until it is happening in their area, when suddenly it is the wrong way to go and the wrong thing to do.

We are putting in place a modern system. It will not be the same system as we had before because we need a different skill mix. Nurses will be needed, but we also need physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech therapists and a range of other people with the types of skill mixes we did not have in the past. I if I were Deputy Kelleher I would hang my head in shame. A Vision for Change was published in 2006, but the first serious move to implement it was in 2011.

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