On Friday the Minister for Health, Dr. James Reilly, announced the establishment of an implementation group on Universal Health Insurance.

The group according to the department will  ‘comprise a mix of those with executive responsibilities within our health service and external experts.’

The members appointed

• Dr. Fergal Lynch, Department of Health (Chair)

• Paul Barron, Department of Health

• Tom Heffernan, Department of Public Expenditure and Reform

• Liam Woods, National Director of Finance, HSE

• Dr. Barry White, National Director for Clinical Strategy and Programmes, HSE

• Brian Fitzgerald, Director of Finance, St. James’ Hospital and Joint Director of the HSE Patient Level Costing Project

• Mark Moran, Former CEO of the Mater Private Hospital and former Chairman of the DoH/HSE Working Group on Reference Pricing and Generic Substitution

• Prof. Reinhard Busse and Sarah Thomson, international experts working with the World Health Organisation, the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies and others

• Dr. Fergus O’Ferrall, Lecturer in Health Policy, Trinity College Dublin

• Dr. Martin Connor, Special Adviser to the Department of Health with international experience in healthcare management (who Sarah Burke has been asking a lot of questions about recently. )

That’s one woman. Out of ten.

The statement says that the group’s membership will will ‘be flexible and will be subject to periodic review as different stages in the implementation process are reached.’

Congratulations to the Minister on achieving such a feat with his first group despite the large numbers of women working in the health services and studying health systems and public administration delivery both here and abroad.