Could the business acumen and vision of Denis O'Brien be the answer to the health service's woes? Or how about the sheer brass neck of someone like Michael O'Leary?
Whatever the answer, it seems unlikely that any of the Celtic Tiger's business icons will be applying their expertise some time soon to the challenges of improving A&E treatment or solving bed shortages.
And yet across the Irish Sea, an Irish-born businessman has been doing just that. Gerry Robinson, renowned management guru and former chairman of Granada and Allied Domecq, conducted his own investigation into the problems faced by a health service which many believe to be beyond redemption.
Earlier this year, BBC viewers watched as the Donegal-born man approached the challenge of reducing the waiting list at Rotherham General Hospital in Yorkshire. Following on from a previous BBC series, in which Robinson worked to turn around failing companies, the exercise once again delivered the message that more money is not always the answer to the problem of rehabilitating a collapsing health service.
"What it needs is managing," says Robinson, who insists that systems like the NHS are in need of a "million-dollar" manager.
Not a civil servant, not a politician, but an individual of the type more likely to be found running massively successful businesses. The right candidate would have "the skin of a rhinoceros" adds Robinson, but should be rewarded with a salary in line with whatever they are worth, even if that stretches into millions of pounds.
Waiting lists appeared to have fallen by the end of the programme, thanks perhaps to the application of Robinson management magic. But not everyone was convinced that best medicine for an ailing health service could be so simple. Brian James, Rotherham General's chief executive, claims the programme failed to convey the complexities of running an NHS organisation."I know it's TV and you have to simplify things, but their great failure is to explain to the public that the NHS isn't like a business where you can hire and fire staff or change your prices," he says.
Such criticisms aside, however, there may be many here who will wonder if Health Minister Mary Harney can afford not to give him a call?