James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

"commends the Government for:

— its health reform programme and acknowledges the measures taken by the Government to mitigate as far as possible the impact on patients and services of the funding and staffing reductions required over the next few years;

— the range of recent initiatives taken by the Health Service Executive to improve the processing of medical cards, including the rule that any medical card holder undergoing a review, and who genuinely engages with that review, will not have his or her entitlement withdrawn before that review is complete, regardless of the expiry date shown on the medical card, as well as other process enhancements and staff redeployment;

— recognising the challenges facing public nursing homes in 2012 and the future, in terms of staffing and infrastructure, and directing the HSE to adopt a more proactive approach and produce a plan which will seek to protect the viability of as many units as possible within the current fiscal and budgetary constraints;

— the additional indicative funding of €55 million provided in the abridged Estimates published last year for the nursing homes support scheme - the HSE national service plan 2012 targets an additional 1,270 people to be in receipt of funding under the scheme by the end of 2012;

— accelerating the type of service delivery reforms that will move to models of care across all service-care groups which treat patients at the lowest level of complexity and provide services at the best possible unit cost; and

— its acknowledgement of the vital role of smaller hospitals which will be detailed in a framework document to be published shortly;

and welcomes the Government's determination to move towards a health system that provides access based on need rather than income, underpinned by a strengthened primary care sector, a restructured hospital sector and a more transparent "money follows the patient" system of funding that will be supported ultimately by universal health insurance."

I am sharing time with Deputies Doherty, Feighan and Keaveney.

To begin with Deputy Healy-Rae, not alone were the comments hurtful to parents of children with autism, they were also untrue, unfounded and had been discredited. Raising children with autism presents enough challenges without having people cast slurs on the parents who work so hard and love their children so much.

It is hard to take a lot of the guff from Deputy Healy-Rae when his father propped up a thoroughly discredited Government-----

See this speech in context