Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:

"—welcomes the Government's commitment to promoting patient safety and high-quality health services and in particular to the setting up of the independent health information and quality authority which will progress the safety and quality agenda in the health services through setting and monitoring of safety and quality standards;

supports the Government's commitment to introducing legislation which, inter alia, will establish the social services inspectorate on a statutory basis, including a robust system of inspection and a strengthened registration and deregistration;

notes the proposed statutory role for the first time of the Office of the Chief Inspector of Social Services in inspecting and maintaining registers of residential centres for people with disabilities, children in need of care and protection and older people in public and private sectors;

notes the Government's commitment to ensuring that high-quality care is made available to all patients in public, private and voluntary nursing homes, and, in that context, welcomes the preparation of new and stronger regulations to update for the first time the Nursing Homes (Care and Welfare) (Amendment) Regulations 1994 and standards for residential care settings for older people;

welcomes the HSE's provision of information to the general public on nursing homes and its policy decision to make nursing home inspection reports available on its website, and, in particular, welcomes the publication of the Leas Cross report;

acknowledges the work which has been initiated since the publication of the Lourdes Hospital inquiry, including action at local level to improve clinical accountability and performance in the hospital;

recognises that high patient volumes are needed for specialist services to achieve the best clinical outcomes;

acknowledges the need to ensure that medical and surgical procedures are carried out at appropriate levels within the hospital network for best patient outcomes;

supports the Government's commitment to reforms that will achieve improved safety and quality outcomes for patients;

acknowledges that the HSE has put in place management structures at both corporate and hospital level with responsibility for ensuring quality and minimising risk;

notes the Government's commitment to the development of a protected environment in which staff may disclose concerns about patients' safety;

notes that the Minister for Health and Children will introduce regulations in early 2007 which will set out a statutory framework for the introduction of a complaints process throughout the HSE;

supports the important role of the Irish Health Services Accreditation Board and its work in applying accreditation standards to ensure safety and continuous quality improvement; and

commends the Government on measures to ensure that the patient safety needs of people with mental illness are monitored and protected by the Mental Health Commission and the Inspector of Mental Health Services."

If anything sums up the need to remove political interference from the day to day running of the health service, it is the case that Deputy Crawford has just mentioned. He said he had a particularly difficult case so he went to the then Minister for Health, Deputy Howlin, and the matter was addressed. If anything has to end in this country, it is political interference in the manner of choosing one patient ahead of another. The reality is that when the parties opposite last left Government, some 27,000 people were on hospital waiting lists.

See this speech in context