Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

That is true and my ambition is to get them. That is why we need a new consultants contract. I cannot break the current contract. We can do it but we would have to compensate people. There are 2,000 people on an existing contract, one third of whom can practise in several places because they are category two doctors. Some 650 of them are in the Dublin area. We want a new contract. At the heart of these negotiations, which hopefully will reach a successful conclusion later this year, has been a one for all system into our public hospitals so that we can get access for patients based on medical need. We are in the final hours of those talks.

On the issue of the resourcing of our public hospital system, we spend 8.9% of our national income on health, which is in line with the OECD spend in the world's 30 richest countries, yet 11% of our population is over the age of 65 while 17% of the OECD population is over the age of 75. The challenge for us is to change the way we perform the service and, in particular, to move more into community and primary care where 95% of health needs are met.

I was asked about isolation facilities. Recently I wrote to the HSE and asked, as a matter of priority, that in our public hospitals single rooms be made available to patients who need isolation before they are made available to private patients. It is not acceptable that if a patient is in need of isolation that a room cannot be made available to him or her because a private patient has preferential access. That is the policy we are implementing hospital by hospital. The hospital of the future will be one where everybody will have a single room. The new children's hospital will have single rooms for everybody and family accommodation. That is the hospital of the future but we are a long way from that here.

On the issue of the Attorney General and the advice, of his own volition the Attorney General got the advise of Mr. Maurice Collins, SC. It is normal practice for the Attorney General to seek outside advice in many cases. What happened was that the Attorney General felt there may be an issue with the 1961 Act and decided to get outside opinion to assist him in advising me. When he got that advice, he wrote to me on 26 October. It was not because some promoter, developer or somebody who is trying to build a co-located facility came forward with advice. It was in the context of funding the new paediatric hospital board that issues arose around the 1961 Act and the Attorney General got the outside advice and made me aware of it and the need to bring in legislation as quickly as possible.

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