I raise with the Tánaiste the issue of cardiac services for the south east. As he will know, I have been campaigning with others in the Oireachtas on this issue for a long number of years. Members in the south east met with the Minister for Health a long number of months ago. At that meeting, we were promised that the national review into cardiac services was going to be published within days. That has not happened. We were also promised that by March, primary percutaneous coronary intervention emergency services would be extended to the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday to Friday and that they would be further extended to seven days a week. That has not happened on time. We need an urgency to be brought to this issue. I do not know what has happened and why the commitments that were made have not been delivered, but it is a really important issue, as the Tánaiste knows. I want to see full 24-7 emergency cardiac services available to people in the south east in the future. A stepping stone on the way to get there is to extend the service to the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Could the Tánaiste tell me when that will happen?

I was informed earlier by the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, that it remains a Government commitment to extend the cath lab service to the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. This was meant to happen in March. It has not happened yet because it is necessary to hire another clinician to do so. That has not been possible to date. It is still intended to get that done this year, in the third quarter of the year. This demonstrates a difficulty that exists in healthcare generally, not just in Ireland but around the world. The easy part can often be the provision of infrastructure - for example, the building of a second cath lab - but the hard part can be finding sufficient staff who are willing to work 24-7, not just for a year or two but for the rest of their careers. That is why these 24-7 services often get centralised in a small number of places. The second cath lab is being provided. We are determined to extend the service to the hours of 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. as soon as possible.