Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----the Deputy about the health service. That is my first point. The second point, which never gets discussed here bizarrely, is that people measure the health service through a very limited prism. I accept there are access challenges in respect of getting into the health service. That is a valid and fair criticism but if one looks at survival rates for cancer, for strokes, for heart attacks, life expectancy being above the EU average and the fact that a baby girl born in a hospital across the road today has a very good chance of living to be 100, how is it that anything my Department or the Government funds that goes well in the health service has nothing to do with the Government and the Department and anything that goes bad has everything to do with it? These are conscious decisions that we as a Government and indeed previous Governments, made. For example, the current leader of Fianna Fáil introduced the smoking ban. There are things that have been done in our health service that have significantly improved the outcomes of our people. I find it somewhat hard to square the circle where one of the things that Deputy Boyd Barrett criticised me for is the overrun in the health service last year, an overrun that has happen nearly every year, and then listed out a number of other things that had I done that would have actually tripled the overrun. The Deputy wants me to sort out the nurses strike at a cost of €300 million a year and to rectify the GP budget and then he is being critical that we cannot live with budget. So the Deputy has to square that one.