Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Tánaiste for indicating that there is a review of these matters. We must make a policy decision now. There will be a long-term process to implement it, covering the lifetimes of many Dáileanna and Governments. However, we are delivering public services in an ad hocmanner now, at a cost of billions of euro and through a myriad of agencies. Some of those agencies are service providers because they were charities originally. There is no uniform national baseline in terms of resources, staffing or quality of service. That is no longer valuable. Will the Government go further than simply examining the voluntary hospitals and examine all public service provision to assess whether we can have the objective of having the State, which funds all the services in any event, providing and being responsible for those services, as is the case in most progressive western European countries?

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