Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I will not speak again at great length. I do not accept what the Minister stated about the Attorney General's advice. I accept the Attorney General would have told the Government that advice given was privileged. It is privileged in that the Government is the Attorney General's client. However, it is open to the Government to decide to make this advice available. No law states one cannot do so. It is a political decision for the Government to make.

I had to restrain myself listening to Deputy Woods. I have known him for many years and he is a decent man. Many years ago when I first entered the House, I made life difficult for him when he was Minister with responsibility for health in the early 1980s. I have a great deal of time and respect for him. However, when he stated Beaumont Hospital had been discriminated against, that it was about time it received extra beds and described the problems of the hospital, I had to pinch myself to remind myself that Fianna Fáil had been in government for almost 18 of the past 20 years.

Deputy Woods is fortunate to have had the privilege to serve as a Minister for the largest portion of time during these 20 years. He was at the forefront of the decision-making processes in Cabinet. He was part of the Cabinet which cut the number of beds in the health service in 1987 and laid the foundations for some of the health crises we have witnessed within the public hospital system during the past two decades. In Cabinet he was able to see the difficulties, as he saw them, of the capacity of Beaumont Hospital not only to meet the needs of the local community but also as a centre for neurosurgery in Dublin and outside the Dublin region. He was in a position to get the Cabinet to focus on the difficulties of the hospital.

I know Beaumont Hospital intimately and people who work there. They have been crying out for years for additional neurosurgeons. I would be a great deal more impressed if we were being told the public service in the hospital would be provided with additional consultant neurosurgeons to provide the services which were so badly needed. It is pointless to provide the land to build a co-located hospital if we do not have the consultants. The timeframe for building it is such that lives will be lost because of the reality that we have too few neurosurgeons in Ireland and too few in Beaumont Hospital. The neurosurgeons have come together for a number of years to demand additional consultants be appointed. Will the Minister speak about this? It is a pity it is not regarded as much of a priority as the legislation before us.

Deputy Woods should not tell us about the difficulties of Beaumont Hospital, as he was in a unique position to address them, to have had them dealt with and ensure that whatever additional facilities were required by the hospital were made available. Beaumont Hospital requires additional beds for public and private patients.

I agree with the Minister on one issue, namely, that the health insurance system was advocated, formulated and established by Government and those covered by health insurance, which includes most Members, are entitled to proper hospital and medical facilities. Let us not play games, however. The problem is we are developing a two-tier system. The richer one is or the greater access one has to health insurance, the greater likelihood one will have speedy access to health care, which everyone should have when they need it. Creating co-located hospitals instead of having private facilities within a hospital will not make a difference or solve the problem of the badly run, ill-equipped, under-resourced public hospital system and it is fiction to believe otherwise.

The problems in Beaumont Hospital will not be resolved simpliciter by the proposal before us because there is a need to provide additional nursing staff, neurosurgeons, greater facilities and more modern equipment. As doctors working in the hospital are aware, some equipment breaks down regularly. It is time something was done to address this issue. These problems should be treated with the urgency and priority afforded this legislation.

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