Roisin Shortall

So I think she handled that well.

But the challenge now for her is to ensure that the public service is brought up to a higher level so that... The aim of this whole thing, the whole Sláintecair thing, is that the vast majority of people in this country...

will be happy to use the public health service.

And that people won't feel they need private health insurance.

Very expensive health insurance.

Which is essentially a health tax.

And, you know, it's not even that that covers everything.

People who have private health insurance, you know, shouldn't have to pay that.

And lots of people scrimp and save in order to be able to pay health insurance.

largely out of fear because they're afraid they'd be waiting a long time you know what we learned this program is it's covering less and less you know a lot of the joint replacement operations now the amount of money that you have to pay is going up and i mean the other thing of course somebody pays expensive health insurance and then they go to see their gp they have to pay for that they have to go they go to see a consultant as an outpatient they're paying 300 euro plus sometimes

So there's a lot of out-of-pocket expenses as well for everybody.

I take heart that it is moving.

Now, you know, that report, it is a blueprint, a 10 year blueprint for major reform of the health service.

And, you know, as they say, you don't turn a big liner overnight.

It is going to be a slow process.

That's why it's a 10 year plan.

And there are a whole lot of different elements to this.

And it's extremely complex in terms of the different levers that you use and the interrelated elements of the health service.

So if you change one, it has implications for other parts of it and that.

So we were very conscious of that.