Seanad debates

Wednesday, 26 February 2003

The previous speaker referred to the health boards. I welcome the Minister's announcement that he will reduce the number of health boards. However, initial reports suggested that he planned to remove public representatives from the health boards. Public representatives are not the problem. Public representatives are elected by the people and are accountable to them. Somebody once said that medicine is too serious to be left to doctors. The last thing we need is a group of consultants in an area looking after their own departments and not keeping the bigger picture in mind. The beauty of having public representatives on health boards is that they will see the bigger picture, both in geographical terms and in terms of human resources.

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