Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat. I welcome Mr. O'Brien and the staff from the HSE and acknowledge that significant progress has been made. It is important that I say that before I go ahead and raise various issues of concern. I find it very difficult to communicate with the HSE because it is not clear whether responsibility for certain things lies with the executive or with the Department of Health. In that context, some of my questions might be better directed to the Department of Health than to the witnesses before us but I ask them, in so far as they can, to answer them.

To what extent is progress being made to reduce the cost of drugs, and generic drugs in particular, to the health service? There seems to be enormous room for savings in that area.

To what extent have we moved from the position where ambulances have to wait for many hours outside hospitals because they cannot recall the trolley that has gone into the hospital? The problem was particularly acute at one stage at Beaumont Hospital so to what extent has that issue been addressed?

I hear anecdotal comments from health workers about continued waste. I have more than one example but I know of a person working in a blood clinic in one of the leading Dublin hospitals being asked to take blood from the same patient multiple times when once would do, leading to waste of that person's time, inconvenience to the patient and the cost involved. To what extent have improvements been made in that area?

I am sure the next issue also involves the Department of Health. When I examined the budgetary figures, the hardest Department to follow with regard to spending was the Department of Health. Will there be moves to make the spending of money more transparent? To compare with the Department of Education and Skills, it is much easier to follow in that Department where money is being spent. Such an exercise would be useful.