John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

It was interesting to listen to Professor Drumm this morning at the Joint Committee on Health and Children, who told us we had fewer elderly people in Ireland as compared to the United Kingdom. The reason was given to us a few months ago by Dr. Seán Barrett from Trinity College Dublin, who said Ireland had the benefit of what he called a "demographic bounce", in that many Irish citizens who would be old at this stage had emigrated in the past to the United Kingdom. The economy benefited as a result, because the elderly cost money. In general people spend more money on health in their final years than in the whole of their previous life. That has helped this country economically, and yet what we see from this debacle is that those who have contributed enormously to Irish society were exploited. The most vulnerable people in society were basically robbed by the State. The Minister for Health and Children tried to rectify and justify this, and she was rightly shot down by the Supreme Court.

Professor Drumm spoke about accountability this morning and the better management of the health service. Like everyone else, I should like to see better management, but it was not clear to me at the end of our questioning how that was going to come about. How are we going to achieve this?

If there are certain hospitals in the State that are not up to scratch, and he seemed to be indicating there are, how are these people going to be called to account? Are managers of hospitals going to be sacked? It is not likely and so there is a real problem at the heart of the health service. What we see here today emphasises that because it was very much a case of sticking our heads in the sand on this issue. One has just to examine the lack of action on the part of a number of Ministers. The previous Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, apparently did not read his e-mails or his brief and yet is quite happy to continue in office. The former Minister of State, Deputy Callely, apparently read some sections of the reports.

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