Before I call Senator Burke, I acknowledge the presence of two councillors, Tommy Cullen and Tom Fortune, and their respective partners to the House. They are more than welcome.

On a good news point, it is interesting that the World Economic Forum now puts Ireland in the top seven countries for strongest democracies. We are joint sixth with Canada after Norway, Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Denmark. It is a credit to the political system in Ireland that we are now regarded as the joint seventh strongest democracy.

Talking about democracy, my colleague, Senator Byrne, raised the issue of the HSE. I have pulled figures from the HSE on what has occurred. The Minister has announced an eight-point plan for slimming it down. I have raised this point before, but I must say that the number of people employed in management and administration over the past two years has increased by the total sum of 1,789. More than 700 of those have been in senior management. For instance, the number of directors has gone from 201 to 272. That is an increase of 71 directors, who are at the top end. That is an increase of 35%. The number of senior managers has gone up by 20.22%, which is an increase of 195 people. We are now talking about slimming it down. The HSE seems to be a juggernaut going down the road with no one in control.

Who is in charge?

I am really concerned about this matter. I believe that if we are talking about an eight-point plan, we should have a debate in the House as regards how we restructure the HSE. Someone should say to stop this juggernaut at this stage before we end up with 19,000 people. We had 15,000 people in administration and management in December 2014. We now have 16,901. At the rate we are going, by the end of this year we will have more than 18,000. I believe we need to have a serious debate on this issue when, in the same two-year period, an extra 39 public health nurses were employed, from 1,460 to 1,499.

The Senator has made his point.

We need a serious debate on this matter.