The people in Tipperary and the medical fraternity are very concerned about a reconfiguration that is proposed. It is proposed that South Tipperary General Hospital will be removed from the South/South West Hospital Group, which has been a very successful partnership, and be aligned with a much larger hospital such as St. Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin, the National Maternity Hospital, University Hospital Waterford and all the others. People are very worried that we will be the poor relation in respect of this matter. We have had a very successful alignment with Cork University Hospital and with University Hospital Kerry. The numbers do not stack up because some regions are very much smaller. We are being aligned with the St. Vincent’s University Hospital. I have been in there recently on a number of occasions. It is an excellent hospital. I want to compliment everybody there and thank them for looking after everybody. Geographically, the hospital is too far from Tipperary. All of the resources, funding and so on will be sucked into St. Vincent's and South Tipperary University Hospital will be left as the poor relation. There is great angst amongst consultants, management, staff and those who use the hospital in Clonmel, which is giving valuable and dedicated service to patients, not those only from south Tipperary but also from north Tipperary and west Waterford.

We still have not finalised the regional health areas. It is intended that they will be established next year. There will always be different opinions as to where the boundaries are drawn. We had that with the hospital groups, and we will certainly have it with the regional health areas. The intention is never to suck resources into the biggest hospital in the area; it is to make sure that it happens the other way and that we build functioning networks.