James Bannon (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House for this Adjournment matter. As he is aware, there is a major democratic deficit in the delivery of health services in local areas since the abolition of the health boards. The provision of carers, home help, child care, etc., and the establishment of clinic appointments are being unduly delayed in a large number of areas. While heretofore, representations could be made to relevant members within a health board, this is no longer the case and one has great difficulty in gaining access to people.

Section 42 of the Health Act 2004 provides for the establishment of regional health forums engaging local elected county and city council members with the Health Service Executive. As I have stated previously, elected members were never a burden on the health service, but by tradition were the voice of the people and a first port of call for those who were lost and ignored in a bureaucratic system.

As Members are aware, the HSE took over responsibility for the management and delivery of health and personal social services on a national basis on 1 January 2005 without any local input. Hence, the function of the regional health forums will be to make representations to the Health Service Executive on the range and operation of health and personal social services provided within their functional areas. Section 42(3) of the Act provides for members to be appointed to a regional health forum by the city and county councils in the forum's functional area. However, no specific details have been made available as to how many members will be appointed per local authority or whether membership will be drawn up on a per capita basis. If this was the case, it would place smaller counties like my native County Longford and others at a great disadvantage.

I am disappointed that since the health boards were abolished, communication has been at an all-time low and elected representatives have been left in the dark as regards the personnel within the HSE. I know from personal experience the number of representations with which a Member of the Oireachtas must deal and without the correct names to hand, it is extremely difficult to channel representations in the most relevant direction.

Hence, I call on the Minister of State to bring forward regulations to engage local elected members with the new HSE without further delay and to improve the flow of information reaching public representatives from the HSE. As the Minister of State is aware, this demand has been made by all the local authority representative associations over the summer months. They are disappointed that although the harvest has come and this House is on the eve of its mid-term break, nothing has happened to date. Perhaps the Minister of State will throw some positive light on the question as to when the forums for local elected representatives will be introduced.