Some time ago, we had a Private Members’ motion in the House on the subject of head and neck cancers. That has led to a number of discussions or conversations with people around the country about the underutilisation of theatres in hospitals. Specifically, it appears that hospital theatres are allocated to specialisms, so thoracic might have so many hours, orthopaedic might have so many hours and so on and so forth. Some of the new specialist services that have come in have been squeezed out as a result of the fact there is only limited time available in the theatres. Then it emerges, on an anecdotal basis, that an orthopaedic group might have access to an operating theatre for two days in the week but in fact can only use it for a day and a half, so a half day of theatre time is lost and patients are losing out.

I have already spoken to the Minister on this issue and I found her to be extremely concerned, but I agreed with her overall response, which is that she cannot micromanage every hospital in the country. I know the Leader may recommend I bring this up as a Commencement matter, but what we need is an audit of all theatre time in the country, how that theatre time is utilised and how many hours of theatre time are going to waste. It would certainly help the health services if we did that.

The public service in this country has never really been thanked for saving the economy. I was reviewing some notes last night from my time as president of the Teachers' Union of Ireland and I recall that teachers used to be able to buy houses. Not too many teachers can buy houses now. The financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, may have been unwound for the public service, but at the end of the day, the standard of living of public servants has gone down greatly.

We need to have a look at that in the near future.