James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Mulherin for her contribution.

The issue of medical appointments was raised. It may come as a surprise to members of the committee that I am considered to be a Dublin Deputy. I have a large rural hinterland whose inhabitants find it extremely difficult to make their way to the hospital and would prefer Beaumont. There is no direct public transport. If one can get to the main road, one will be able to get a bus into town and then a bus out of town to get to the outpatients department and endure the same on return. The Vantastic initiative is hugely welcome and one that we want to support and expand. We like to be able to provide a service that ensures people can attend the outpatients department. It is stressful enough having to go to hospital without being stressed about how to get there. That is a huge issue. There is also the issue of people who do not arrive at outpatients because they have difficulty getting there and it is so long since they got the appointment they have forgotten. We have asked hospitals to use the text to ask people the week before if they will attend and remind them again on the day.

The Deputy asked about budgets and the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, mentioned the overrun last year which was less than 1.8%. Given that we are in an era of ever-reducing budgets and have taken the guts of €3 billion out, that is a reasonable performance, but I would like it to be much better this year. Because of that we have put in place new accounting mechanisms and beefed up our finance and accounting mechanisms with the addition of expertise by individuals in the four regions in the Department and in the payments board. We will have confirmation in a couple of days as to what the profiling is. This is something we could not do in the past; we had to wait until the middle or near the end of February to know what had happened in January. Sometimes it was March or April by the time one found out and by then the horse had bolted. This year, however, the position will be different.

Returning to the substantive issue of the whole area of disability, the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, the Government and I are absolutely committed to the principle that the money follows the patient and in the area of disability that means individualised, personalised budgets. In a general way we need to move away from what the service providers want and towards what service users need, and to have them involved in the process of determining and dictating the services that should be available to them. That is an issue on which the Minister of State and I look forward to making progress.