Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I am not going to deliver a script. I want to respond to the arguments that have been made, rather than making prepared comments which may be out of context, given what was said.

We all acknowledge that, from the taxpayer's perspective, expenditure on health has increased four-fold in ten years. We also know that in 2006, more than 1 million patients were treated in our public hospitals, either on an inpatient or day-case basis. We know 2.5 million patients were seen in our outpatient departments, 1.3 million arrived at accident and emergency units and there were 65,000 births. By any standards, for a country with population of 4.3 million, that is a considerable output of activity, which was performed by the approximately 120,000 staff working in the health services, not including those working in primary care, community care or continuing care.

The purpose of the health reform agenda is to ensure that as we invest more money in new facilities and treatments, we also change the way we do business so we can have a better and speedier experience for patients. Many of the initiatives pursued by Government in the past ten years had this aim, in particular the establishment of the National Treatment Purchase Fund, which sought to use the facilities available in this jurisdiction or, in the case of some treatments, in other jurisdictions to treat those waiting longest on the public hospital waiting lists. I am happy to say almost 60,000 patients have been treated to date. Instead of people waiting two to five years for 17 of the top 20 procedures, they wait on average two to five months, which is a huge improvement.

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