Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is one of the most important questions. We have plenty of plans. We have programmes for Government. We have clinical strategies. We have a load of these things but they do not mean anything unless we can actually deliver for patients.

I believe we can deliver and are delivering. The committee has acknowledged, for which I thank it, the work the health service and the Department have done in terms of the response to Covid. It has been broadly welcomed and appreciated. We know the health service can not only deliver on Covid but deliver to one of the highest standards anywhere in the world. What we have seen and acknowledged is an extraordinary operational response to Covid. Where else do we need to deliver? We need to deliver on the affordability measures, including for six-year-olds and seven-year-olds, drugs payment schemes and so forth. All those areas are being and will be delivered this on year. Healthcare will be more affordable throughout the year. Free contraception for 17- to 25-year-olds will be delivered on.

We then come to the clinical strategies. It is my view that we have not been delivering at the level we should have been delivering for some years on the clinical strategies. Partly, that comes down to funding. Last year, I allocated full funding to the strategies. The national cancer strategy, which got €20 million, the ambulance strategy, the maternity strategy, and the trauma strategy were fully funded and they have been fully funded again this year. They have the money. The clinical leads are dedicated. There are some very important measures that are going on below the radar. I will give an example from the national cancer strategy. I was in the Mater Hospital. They have hired a psycho-oncology team. They have increased the workforce. Up until last year, patients actively being treated for cancer who got really sick, which happens regularly, had to come in through the emergency department. Sometimes they had to sit on a chair for hours in an emergency department in a pandemic, while completely immunosuppressed, and wait for care. Now, patients phone the Mater to say they are coming in.

They are then taken then into the cancer ward and cancer units and are treated there.

There are some amazing things happening in the national maternity strategy. I visited Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital Drogheda where they showed what we might call the traditional birthing suites there and, then, the new ones. One would be so proud of what the health service, the midwives, and the obstetricians are doing in modern patient-led care where, if a woman wants midwifery-led care, she gets it.

On the clinical strategies there are some very important things happening. I am launching the waiting list plan tomorrow. It is very ambitious and must deliver. In the final three months of last year, we launched the initial phase of the waiting list plan and it worked well. Over those three months the total numbers waiting fell by nearly 5.5%. That was due, in part, to tens of thousands of adults and a smaller number of children being treated as part of that.

On permanent capacity, it is a mixed bag. We have all talked about, and Deputy Cullinane alluded to the fact that 14,000 staff were funded for last year and a little over 6,000 were hired. Some 10,000 staff are funded for this year and the HSE is saying that perhaps 5,500 will be hired. We can look at that in two ways. One is that we are significantly below our ambition, which is true. It is also the case, however, that the two years with the highest number of additions to the health workforce since the foundation of the HSE were last year and the year before.