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

This is important. To take things in isolation does not allow the context. Health spending quadrupled from 1997 to 2010 and still in 2002 there was a Supplementary Estimate of €210 million, in 2003 it was €62 million, in 2006 it was €240 million, in 2008 it was €345 million, in 2009 it was €254 million and a whopper in 2010 of €595 million. In January 2011, despite a quadrupling of health spending and the voting of massive Supplementary Estimates, we still ended up with 569 people on trolleys on a given day. That is noteworthy.

Deputy Ó Caoláin was concerned about the new Act and whether it would mean that we would have less transparency. In fact, we will have even more transparency because both the Secretary General as the Vote holder and the director general of the replacement agency will still be in before the committee to face questions. There will be no diminution of accountability.

Deputy Ó Caoláin also referred to the cost of drugs and wanting the lowest price. Such matters have to be decided by way of negotiation. We did seek to go for the lowest price but as we could not get agreement through negotiation we went for the median. We have still reduced the cost of drugs this year by €120 million, which is a considerable amount of money. We need to do more. The serious cross-border threats directive will allow us to join with much bigger countries such as the UK, Germany and France to purchase vaccines in particular and that will reduce costs even further. I will push the notion in Europe that the directive should extend to drugs in a more general sense. We have a problem in that if we go too low even the drug companies that produce drugs in this country will release so much for our market and wholesalers will snap them up and sell them in other countries where they can make a profit. There is a balance to be struck.

This has been an extremely busy year. We launched Future Health - A Strategic Framework for Reform of the Health Service 2012-2015. In May we had two reports - on the establishment of hospital groups as a transition to independent hospital trusts and on securing the future of small hospitals. They were both published and we now have the chairperson of each group in place and the advertisements are in the newspapers for the new CEOs of the groups. We launched the Healthy Ireland policy initiative on health and well-being. That was published in March and is now being implemented. That is a critical point for me. As Minister for Health and as a doctor I believe we must to stop paying lip service to prevention and pay for it. That applies to tobacco in particular. I am very pleased that the committee was able to start the hearings on the heads of the standard packaging Bill.

The Health Service Executive (Governance) Act came into operation on 25 July, which abolished the board of the HSE and provided for a directorate which is now in place. The work on the national children’s hospital is progressing. The two boards are in place. Timelines are being put in place and we look forward to expediting that. Only last week St. James’s Hospital secured planning permission in an eight-week period for a seven-storey building to help with the decant of existing services off the site to make more room for the hospital. The draft paper on universal health insurance, UHI, which I know Deputy Ó Caoláin has been anxious about, has been presented to me. We are studying that. We hope to expedite it and, if possible, to get it published before Christmas.

Shadow funding for selected hospitals under the "money follows the patient" policy is in full progress. That will be implemented on a phased basis from 1 January 2014. All that progress was made while hosting an extremely successful European Presidency where we got the directive on tobacco through against the odds, as many people saw it. We have engaged in significant cross-Border initiatives with the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, Mr. Poots, on alcohol, tobacco, paediatric cardiac care and a range of other initiatives. We made a major contribution to the Haddington Road agreement, and successfully concluded negotiations with consultants which now reduces their starting pay by one third, allows for the appointment of directors of clinical care and allows consultants to work any five days out of seven, which is making a big impact on services.

The health reform board, a programme management office in the Department and a systems reform group in the HSE have all been established. We have a communications strategy. The Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Bill was enacted by the Houses. A national positive ageing strategy was published in April and is now being implemented. A review of the emergency aeronautical support service pilot project has been completed and found that significant reduced transport times for seriously ill patients were achieved and made a recommendation that it would be continued.

The finance reform board is in place and the chief financial officer, who is present, has been appointed. A new financial and cost management system has been identified and is being costed. We will introduce free GP care next year. The special delivery unit, SDU, work continues. The e-health strategy was approved by Government in October and will be shortly launched and implemented.

The publication of the Health Identifiers Bill, as agreed by the Government, will take place tomorrow. All of us, including committee members, did considerable work on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill. It was another achievement during the year. The public health (sunbeds) Bill has now been stamped by the Attorney General and will be published either this side of the new year or early in the new year. The relocation of the National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, to St. Vincent's campus in Elm Park was announced in May and, as members know, the report of the tobacco policy review group, Tobacco Free Ireland, was published and launched in October. These are only some of the developments during the year, which has been extremely busy.

I thank the members for all their assistance. They hold us to account and we expect to be held to account. I thank the Department and HSE representatives for attending today. I thank them and all the officials for their courtesy. I wish everyone present and all the staff in the health service and Department a happy Christmas.