Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his presentation and for raising the issue of health services.

On the question of who is in charge, factually, I presume the Deputy will be aware that Bernard Gloster is the CEO of the HSE and Deputy Stephen Donnelly is the Minister for Health.

There are 26,172 more staff working in our health service now than there were at the beginning of 2020. That is 26,000 additional staff the Deputy did not refer to in his opening remarks, including more than 8,000 midwives, which is a 21% increase. According to the OECD frameworks and assessment of various health services, we are one of the top countries in respect of the number of nurses per patients. We have an additional 4,000 health and social care professionals and close to 3,000 additional doctors and dentists. We have cut costs for patients across the board, as the Deputy will be aware. We have removed inpatient hospital charges. We have had the biggest expansion of access to free GP care in the history of the State, to 500,000 more people. That means that up to 60% of our population is now eligible for a GP card or medical card. We have reduced the drugs payment scheme cost. We have significantly funded diagnostic scans for patients. We introduced free contraception for women up to the age of 31. For the first time, we have providing funding for assisted human reproduction, including in vitro fertilisation, IVF, and we agreed a new consultant contract, which is significant with respect to increased activity. More than 1,700 consultants have signed up to that new contract. The Deputy must also be aware that in the past two years we have built up an entire new community health service from scratch, including primary care, chronic disease management, older persons services and ambulance services, employing of thousands of new people in the community. We have increased our acute hospital bed capacity by 1,126 beds in the past three years, expanded our intensive care unit, ICU, capacity by 25%, and new primary care centres have opened up all over the country. We increased college and training places to deal with what were challenges in getting new recruits and so on. Some 662 student places have been provided in the higher education sector on health-related courses this academic year, including 200 student places in nursing, midwifery and therapy professions in Northern Ireland. Today for every GP who retires between one and a half and three new GPs are starting work. Waiting times are coming down and we have provided a significant transformation in women's healthcare, with more CIN3, gynaecological and fertility hubs and specialist menopause clinics.

The context of what the Deputy said is that the population is rising. It has risen significantly-----

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