The boundaries for the four new health service regions which will replace the 11 health board regions being abolished under the Government's reform plan were announced yesterday.
The new regions are the Western, Southern, Dublin/North-East and Dublin/Mid-Leinster regions. Their headquarters will be in Galway, Cork, Kells and Tullamore.
The Western region will cover a vast area along the seaboard from Limerick to the Inishowen Peninsula; the Southern region will cover the entire south of the country from Kerry to Wexford.
The Dublin/Mid-Leinster area will cover the midlands, Wicklow and parts of south and west Dublin; and the Dublin/North-East region will cover from north Dublin to Cavan and Monaghan.
Announcing them, the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, insisted that the new structures were not new health boards but rather units within the new Health Service Executive (HSE).
This will co-ordinate services delivered through 32 existing community care offices which are to be distributed around the country.
All regional offices and the local health offices will report to the HSE, which is to be headquartered in Naas and is due to take over the day-to-day running of the Department of Health in January, leaving the Department to concentrate on policy issues.
The chairman of the interim HSE, Mr Kevin Kelly, said there would be "no big bang" in January. Change would evolve. "It's a journey, it will take a few years", he said.
Asked what would become of the chief executives of existing health boards, Mr Martin said a press briefing was not an appropriate forum to discuss contracts of individual staff.
However, there was ongoing consultation with the social partners and staff representatives, and there would be no involuntary redundancies.
Furthermore, he said, there were several new posts in the new set-up, such as national directors of primary, community and continuing care which would create new opportunities for existing staff.
Mr Kelly said that he appreciated the anxiety expressed by staff, and the HSE would be embarking on a major communications programme with them shortly.
He added that the four HSE offices in Galway, Cork, Kells and Tullamore were administrative offices.
"It will be a very light touch. They will be small offices," he said. The new services would aim to improve the journey through the healthcare system for patients, create a better environment for staff, take out a lot of bureaucracy and deliver value for money.
The interim HSE had, he said,traced the journeys of up to 30 patients through the Irish healthcare system to date.
"What we've learnt out of that is quite extraordinary, and it would make you very optimistic that, even by doing small things, over a period of a year or two we can bring about a lot of change from the point of view of patients," he said.
Patients had been found going from A to B, back to A, on to C and back again.
"The journeys seem to be too complicated from a patient point of view," he said.
Meanwhile, Mr Martin reiterated that regional forums would be established to allow public representatives, nominated by local authorities, to meet about six times a year with the new regional offices of the HSE.
The concession will appease local politicians dropped from health boards.
Also yesterday Mr Pat McGrath, group managing director of the Project Management Group, was appointed chairman of the new Health Information and Quality Authority.