Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I hope, politics aside, that the Chairman does not doubt the commitment I attach to the urgent needs of our patients. Nobody has a monopoly of concern or compassion for them. In the Chairman's region, when he and others approached me and said they could not wait for the capital plan and that something had to be done about bed capacity in Limerick, we went ahead together and found the funding in advance of the capital plan to proceed with the 60-bed modular unit. Unlike previous Governments, which during boom times decided there were too many hospital beds in the country - that gets airbrushed from history now - and shut them down, my record is that in every single year I have been Minister there have been more beds in the Irish health service.

Looking at recruitment and retention truthfully, we had a major issue with GPs, a major issue with our nurses and midwives and a major issue with our consultants - and others, but I will take just those three significant groups. We have worked our way through the GP process. We have more to do, but the GP community itself has endorsed by 95% the arrangement we reached. I know that the Chairman, while acknowledging there needs to be a new contract, has welcomed the progress in that regard. With the nurses and midwives we have come up with an agreement that will see more money put into nurses' pockets, which was ratified by 66% of nurses and midwives. My next big body of work on recruitment and retention in the health service concerns consultants. As Minister for Health, however, I find that on some days I come into the Houses of the Oireachtas and everybody wants to get very irate about the overspend on health while, on other days, I come in and before 11.30 a.m. we have probably racked up a bill of €500 million or more. There are competing demands in the health service. That is why we must reform it. I know that that is why the Chairman is passionate about it, but so am I.

I am absolutely passionate about reform in the health service. We would like to do it a million times more quickly, but we have taken major decisions in the past six months alone such as on the agreement with GPs, the breaking up of the HSE into new structures and engagement with consultants. We are genuinely putting the building blocks in place. As Minister, I will, rightly, be held to account on day-to-day issues, but I am satisfied that the things to which I have referred are the blocks that will build a better health service. A compelling case has been made by members today, as well as by colleagues from the mid-west, as to why we need to move on the question of MRIs. As it sounds like the lease model will deliver on it much more quickly, we need to explore it urgently and rectify it.