Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Whether it is good news or bad news, the figures should be published at a reasonable time. The Minister's colleague who was responsible for the housing figures got caught on this a number of times and now those figures are published. I have written to the Minister on this matter on more than one occasion. We all know what kind of news gets published at 6 p.m. on a Friday and it is not good news.

Many of the questions I had have been asked. There is a section in the document for the National Advisory Council on Drugs but there is no money put beside it. That jumped out at me. Perhaps the Minister would be good enough to explain what that is.

The maternity strategy has been mentioned already. I would like to mention the baby friendly health initiative, which closed yesterday. Part of a maternity strategy, albeit a small enough part, is to encourage mothers to breastfeed. It would strike me as a bit counter-intuitive to cut the funding to this initiative, which I think was geared towards encouraging mothers to breast feed. Our breastfeeding rates are atrocious. They really are. It is hard in the maternity hospitals to find the space and time to sit, particularly with new mothers, to give the encouragement that is necessary. A cultural change is needed. If we are all agreed that the low breast feeding rates are something that we need to address, it strikes me as somewhat counter-intuitive to have closed the initiative. The Minister might be able to explain why that happened or if there is going to be something there to replace it.

Mr. Tony O'Brien has said on a number of occasions that the HSE does not have the capital budget necessary to build major infrastructure projects. I am thinking in my own constituency of the new forensic hospital - it will not be called the central mental hospital any more - as well as the national children's hospital and the new maternity hospital. If Mr. O'Brien on the one hand is saying that the shillings are not there, while on the other hand the Minister is saying they are definitely going to be built, there does seem to be a disconnect. The Minister might explain why and how.

On the figures on primary care, I understand the Minister's staff will be tormented with questions on this issue.

It really stumps me that while money is being made available to build primary care centres like the one in Balbriggan and while I am sure it will soon have a big ribbon placed on it and someone attending with lots of photographers to open it, there are no new staff. There is not one single extra body for Balbriggan. I have put down questions on this for the past 15 months. It is the same story with a lot of the primary care centres. While there are new facilities, there are no new staff members. If we are going to be serious about primary care, we will need to see some focus on the recruitment of staff.

I appreciate fully and accept the Minister's bona fides on scoliosis. I know people are working hard to get this done, but that theatre should be open seven days a week. There are 68 complex cases which are not suitable for outsourcing. These are kids who cannot be taken abroad. We will not get into the debate about outsourcing, but even if the wherewithal was there and the contracts were signed, there are 68 kids who cannot travel. I am not a doctor, but my understanding is they can only be treated in Crumlin because of the level of their specialty. They have all been waiting more than four months and I do not think the target will be met for them. The parents deserve to know. They are in the dark. They hear on the news that the targets are going to be met, but they look at their kids and they have no date for their surgeries. If the targets are not going to be met for those kids by the end of the year, hard and all as it is, the fair thing to do is to be honest with the parents, tell them it is not going to happen and provide them with a realistic date. Certainly, we have all been contacted by people who are in that scenario.

Can we get a figure on home help hours? While I see the global figure provided, can the Minister give the committee with a breakdown of the money spent on private, not-for-profit and directly-employed home help? When I worked in the union, we engaged someone who was much better than me with figures to go through it. That person came to the conclusion that the directly-employed and not-for-profits represented the best value for money, yet year-and-year until now, the spend has been going up on the for-profit global multinational corporations with their millions and billions in profit and top executive salaries. That pushes the overall spend up. While that is good news for the Government, which can say "Look at us. We are spending more money on home help", no additional hours are being provided because it is just buying more expensive hours from global multinational corporations.