Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

That is patently absurd. It suggests that 35,000 extra employees are going to work every day and doing nothing which is also patently absurd. I can give a simple example of the improvements in the health service. When I became Minister for Health and Children in June 1997, the Government of which the Deputy was a member left a situation where the intellectual disability provision was €1 million for that year which did not even cover emergencies. We have had subsequent multi-annual investment in that area, in which I was involved, for three years of more than €18 million. This meant increases in residential places for more than 1,700 people with intellectual disability and more than 3,000 new day care places. That is just one subhead of activity and there are many more where there have been real improvements. There is no suggestion of a completed agenda but real improvements for ordinary people in respect of the increased provision in the health service.

On the question of frontline staff, there are an extra 6,500 nurses in the service and 8,500 in the medical, dental and health and social care professional grades. We then hear the facile idea that support services are a waste. For frontline staff to do their job properly, they need good support staff behind them. I do not think consultants should be engaged in surgeries and all that type of detailed work and that they should work out their appointments for next week and send out the letters themselves. While there is the superficial attraction of the Deputy's argument which is meant to have a wider populist appeal, there are many in the support services that help frontline staff to do their job better.

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