Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I would like to pick up on what Senator MacSharry had to say. I agree with him that there is a need for a major debate on the health sector. Over the last two months, discussions on health issues have been personalised by the focus on the Minister. I think there should be a focus on long-term planning and on the real issues. Even though over €2.5 billion has been cut from the health budget in the last four or five years, we are continuing to provide the same level of service. In fact, we have increased it. Over 254,000 additional medical cards have been issued. We are providing that service to those people. I accept that a debate is needed. One of the problems in the health sector is that it has been allowed to develop in an unplanned way in many respects. I will give a simple example. There are three transplant units in Dublin. There is just one such unit in Norway, and it is doing three or four times more work than the three units in Dublin. We need to sit down and engage in long-term planning, rather than allowing the health sector to continue to develop in a disjointed way. While I would welcome a debate, I would not like a continuation of the personalised debate that has taken place over the last 12 months.