Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Notwithstanding all that Mr. O'Brien has said, we have known about this demographic problem - that we are going to live longer and will have an increased population - for some time. In the past we spent money on health - we threw money into health - yet we still had waiting times in emergency departments, we still had an absence of step-down beds and we still had an issue with routine procedures. Have we learned from that for the future?