Eoghan Harris (Independent)

——and a man who is trying to do this job properly for the first time in Ireland. I am old enough to remember the aftermath of former Deputy Noel Browne. I remember from my childhood that he had to threaten to train local authority workers to give injections of streptomycin to break the consultants' attempts to smash his health reforms.

Everybody knows what the problem with the health service is. The Fitzgerald report, the Tierney report and the Hanly report laid it out in simple terms. It is not a matter of money. There is no point in throwing money, for example, at the Garda if the money is going into the hands of a bouncer in a Spar shop who will not do anything with it. Similarly, there is no point in throwing money at the health service unless a number of simple reforms, which were laid out in these reports, are carried out. First of all, Portlaoise is not a suitable place to be doing that sort of thing——