Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I accept the Taoiseach's comments about the need for co-ordination. Crumlin hospital has found €6.5 million in cuts from its cost base but that will not solve the problem. A ward has been closed; trained staff and expensive equipment will lie idle and, as a consequence, children will not be treated. The system is all wrong. At the first sign of budgetary difficulty, the hospital looks at its cost base to see what to do. It cut €6.5 million and stopped treating patients. In other systems, the opposite would happen. Fine Gael has proposed that money should follow the patient and hospitals should be paid for what they do. If they are given €140 million for 2009, why is the patient seen as an obstacle, not a resource? Does the Taoiseach believe the system he has stood over for 12 years can deliver the services we need and patients deserve? Four months into the year a children's ward is being closed in this hospital. Does the Taoiseach not accept it would be a far better system if hospitals were paid for what they did, if they saw that instead of closing wards and leaving expensive equipment unused, they should be used more, with theatre times extended? Trained consultants and front-line staff should see patients as a resource, not as an impediment. This has been ongoing for 12 years and it is not working. Will the Taoiseach consider the proposal made by Deputy James Reilly on behalf of Fine Gael, that the "FairCare" system should apply here, where the money follows the patient, rather than the other way round? In the immediate term, to meet the €10 million shortfall in 2009, the Minister for Health and Children has repeatedly spoken about her redundancy programme within the HSE. This would save more than €10 million at any one time and allow the hospital to keep its children's wards open, while enjoying better co-ordination between hospitals.

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