If Ministers for Health stay in this country 52 weeks a year, there'll be plenty of time for them to do firefighting exercises - taking responsibility for every staff or system blunder, or doing photo-ops entering Tallaght hospital pretending to tell someone who seems thoroughly professional and intelligent (the new CEO) how to do his job.
If the minister for health spends his or her time permanently in crisis management mode then he or she'll will never learn from other countries. It's important that the people in charge are prepared and allowed to step outside and learn from time to time.
Outside of people who read (for want of a better word) the Daily Mail most think that the improvements imported from Canada to improve our cancer treatment are a good thing.
Were the trips to Canada a waste of time and money? Should they have been done on the phone? How do you cost those "junkets" versus the improved health outcomes?
Now we're visiting another country not entirely dissimilar to us with limited resources and who no doubt do many things better.
Hospitals in the English speaking world have Irish staff at all levels of operation, these staff often will go out of their way to meet with the minister and share their experiences. Getting advice, different viewpoints, ideas, maybe even encouraging back some of the staff to help implement the ideas, comes from trips like these.
And you need to be there, you need to meet the people who're doing the work and too busy to come here, you need to bypass the layers of bureaucracy that will normally exist when somebody has an idea they want to bring to a minister. You have to be able to meet people in corridors on the way to meetings, or bring someone into the meeting who just happens to be around.
This is where the minister needs to be be in person, not out in Tallaght hospital telling people working flat out to work faster because some mistakenly think that's the minister's job.