Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State and wish her well in her continuing role in the Department of Health. The Minister of State is from my constituency and it is great that she is continuing in that role because the work she has done in the past three years has been extremely progressive and reforming. I hope that will continue.

I also join with colleagues in wishing the former Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly, well. He has done a great deal of work in a very short time in an area in which it is very difficult to get reform. I have evidence of that. In the past three years I have been pushing for reform in how we deal with junior doctors, but it is only now that the issue is being dealt with. I hope that the MacCraith report that was published last Monday week will not be parked for another ten years. In fact, it took me four days to get a copy of that report from the Department of Health. I thought it was unfair that Members of this House and the members of the Joint Committee on Health and Children had to wait four days for a Department of Health report to be made available to them.

I agree with the point made by Senator John Crown about the lack of consultation and the fact that a contract was put up online before there was any meeting with the representatives of the medical organisations. That is not the way to do business. It is important that we emphasise that this was a draft contract. It was being approached in the way I would approach any legal matter I am involved in: one puts one's best foot forward in the hope of gaining the maximum out of it. I think that is exactly what the Department did, but I think it was the wrong way to start off because one of the things that we need if we want a successful health care system is to have the people on the front line - the GPs - on board. GPs make a significant contribution in the provision of health care and the last thing we need to do is to produce contracts that antagonise them. This will not keep them on side. Publishing the draft contact in the way it was published was not the way to do business, and I hope that will never happen again.

I hope the Department is taking on board the concerns that have been raised by GPs at public meetings right around the country. They have genuine concerns and I ask that their concerns be taken on board. I do not like being accused by GPs of voting for a gagging clause. I did not vote for one. This was a draft contract, and nothing had been signed off. I have said publicly that any such clause was unenforceable and that, in respect of health issues, it is in the interests of the public to be aware of an issue arising in the health services. It is important that the people who are on the front line can comment on it and help to move the debate forward, making sure that we arrive at a solution to the problem rather than pushing it under the carpet and hoping the problem will go away. This reform is a welcome one and it is important that we get everybody from the health service on board, right across the front line, from the GPs to the administrators.

I wish to raise an issue that arose at last week's meeting of the Joint Committee of Health and Children on the draft contract for GPs. In a reply that I got at the meeting last week, it was confirmed that more than 1,000 people in the HSE were given permanent jobs without interviews. We are hiding behind the recruitment embargo and people are going into positions without proper procedures being followed in terms of an interview process. I really think that is an issue that needs to be tackled. One group has a 42-page contract while another group did not go through an interview process. That does not sound right. The Department should deal with this at the earliest possible date.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, and wish her every success in her role in the Department.