Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is very important. We have 58 seconds to have this conversation but it would be good to have a session at the Oireachtas health committee where we can go through all of the various regions and KPIs and recognise the variance. For example, we spoke in December about Galway, where there was a particular challenge. It reported 86% within the target in December, which was up from 68% in November. Local management is so important. Significant additional resources in terms of people and equipment are included in the annual plan and in the capital plan. Sometimes this is the issue and there is a question later on recruitment and replacement when we can deal with this. It is also about local management. Deputy Charles Ward spoke earlier about access to surgery. This is why I am putting in additional oncology chairs and surgical hubs in Letterkenny hospital to make sure there is better access. It is a combination of various things but as long as we are focused on what is different and why it is different, we are all likely to achieve a better and more consistent outcome.

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