Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

Those in Cabinet will know that proposals are brought by a Minister to the Government and are either agreed or rejected thereby. When they are agreed, I, as a member of Cabinet with collective responsibility, support, defend and advance them.

Being a general practitioner, Deputy Reilly will know that the health service in Ireland has improved dramatically over the past decade. I have a list of improvements extending to 20 pages. I will not elaborate on them all but will mention just a few. Today 11,000 older people are being supported clinically at home, whereas there was no such support ten years ago. Some 24,000 people with disabilities are in receipt of day services, while almost none of these services was available in the early 1990s. Eight thousand people with disabilities are in care while virtually nobody was ten or more years ago. Four thousand disabled people are in receipt of respite services annually.

The health service has increased the output from its hospitals. I very much welcome the comments of the Taoiseach on outputs and delivery because we sometimes become obsessed with money and resources. As the OECD has shown, we have 3.9 staff per acute hospital bed, which is double the OECD average. The concentration on inputs rather than outcomes has been one of our great failures as a country in terms of our attitude to public services. Today our hospitals are treating nearly 400,000 more people annually than they did a decade ago.

Today, 200,000 more people have medical cards than they did three years ago and a greater number of people than ever before can go to their general practitioner free of charge than in any time since the 1980s, when unemployment was three times higher.

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