Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

I will tell the Deputy about a few reports. We mentioned life expectancy earlier. Between 1966 and 1996, people aged 70 added one year to their average lifespan. In the ten-year period between 1996 and 2006 this increased by two years. We have doubled our performance — in fact, it improved six-fold, because that was over a ten-year period as opposed to a 30-year period. Among the reasons for this are enhanced prosperity and reductions in strokes, heart disease and so on as a result of better interventions. Successive Ministers, including the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, Deputy Noonan and many Deputies from the Fianna Fáil Party who have preceded me since 1997, have invested heavily from taxpayers' resources in better treatments, and this is paying dividends. There is no doubt about that. The increase in life expectancy which I mentioned earlier means that somebody aged 70 can now expect to live 12.8 more years in the case of a man and 15.7 years for a woman, as opposed to 10.6 and 13.7 years respectively, which were the previous figures. It is a dramatic improvement and we all welcome that.

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