Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The questions I asked in the first round were seen as comments. I would like to go back to the scoliosis issue, however. We need to deal with that firmly and quickly. We also need a response from this meeting and any other meetings to indicate precisely what it is intended to do. We can come to all the meetings we want and raise the issues again and again. The people expect to see results coming from that. That is what I am looking for. I raise the issues of scoliosis and cataracts and the organisation of the necessary surgery.

I also want to raise the issue of planning for the future. I look at my own constituency as an example. The population is growing quite rapidly.

We have Naas General Hospital there. We need to monitor the extent to which facilities there need to continue to expand in line with demographic trends to ensure we do not come to a spot down the road when somebody says if we had planned it properly, we would have been ready for it now. Now is the time to plan and put it into operation quickly, effectively and efficiently. I would like to a response on that issue.

The other thing I have raised at the previous meetings is primary care centres. There are examples in my constituency. We have already agreed a primary care centre for Maynooth and we expect one for Leixlip too. We have one in Celbridge and we have a very good one in Kilcock, which has the lowest population of all the towns. This is forward planning and a very good idea. Maynooth has a population of 20,000 students plus the town's indigenous population. There is a very strong pull factor and therefore a requirement for a primary care centre in the town in a hurry. The last thing we heard was that somebody was consulting builders concerning where we could get a site. That is not the business of builders, the construction sector or anybody else. It is the responsibility of the policymakers in the Houses, back in the offices and so on and so forth. We need to get progress on these things. We should not be waiting. We should not have to ask a second time. This is necessary and urgent forward planning. It is the same situation in Maynooth and Leixlip. Somebody came up with the idea that we would have mini primary care centres in both towns. We will like hell is the answer to that question. Consulting builders would, of course, be a great consultation. There will be no more of that kind of nonsense. We will have a policy decision and that is where this issue is supposed to rest.

Regarding people who have had cataract examinations, are on waiting lists but whom we cannot facilitate, those people cannot wait for those lists to expire. There are one or two cases I have made representations about repeatedly and the same people keep coming back. They are disappointed because they think that either I am not listening or the people to whom I speak are not listening, so it is Hobson's choice.

I thank the Cathaoirleach. Those are all my questions and I will accept answers to them all, and even written answers if it is not possible to come up with the actual answers.