Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The accident and emergency initiatives we have funded through the HSE and for which we have set targets through the HSE are the final responsibility of each hospital. Among the changes that have taken place and the manner in which the health service is delivering services, greater accountability is achieved by measuring in the first instance. If one does not measure something one will not be able to manage it. We never measured in the past.

If Deputy Jan O'Sullivan is suggesting that 44% of the 3,000 people going daily to accident and emergency departments have to wait for more than 12 hours, that is not the case. She referred to a man she met recently. I met somebody on my way here who told me that a member of his family was in an accident and emergency department in this city at the weekend and they were astonished at how fast the person was seen and how clean the hospital was compared with previous visits. We can all refer to isolated cases.

I would love to get to a situation where nobody in an accident and emergency department would have to wait more than six hours to be seen and discharged or kept for observation, which is often the case, and admitted to a ward. This has to be the ambition. However, one does not achieve the ambition overnight, there has to be steady progress on the way and we have made enormous progress in the past few years with regard to accident and emergency attendances and waiting times.

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