Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

A later reply to a question dealing with the industrial relations environment may deal with some of the issues raised by the Deputy. As regards the Deputy's request to brief her party on the fair deal scheme, I am happy to do so. I would be happy to provide same for the Fine Gael party.

On fair deal, a completely new legal system has been introduced. In many cases we are dealing with people of diminished ability and issues in respect of family residence require court approval and so on. There is a time lag in respect of the backlog. The majority of the 7,000 applications to which I referred are in respect of people already in care or in the acute hospital system. A backlog was inevitable given the new scheme came into operation only in November. We all anticipated such a backlog. I am satisfied that when those decisions are made, many of which will not require court approval and some of which have been already approved, people will be able to move rapidly to appropriate care. Many of the people who have made applications are people already in care and who are opting for this system as opposed to the subvention system. Others may not have received any support.

On the closure of beds, the plan contains no proposal to close X or Y number of beds. The plan is to move from in-patient to day care. Best practise is that 80% of surgery should be done on a day case basis. We have quite a bit to go to reach that target. We must also reach the target in respect of same day admission, even where overnight is required. Among the initiatives currently underway with the appointment of Dr. Barry White as clinical director is the ringfencing of beds for surgical or elective activity, having new care pathways led by specialist clinicians around the country so that there is less emphasis on people having to go into hospital, in particular for those with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, respiratory and other conditions, and a greater emphasis on providing that service on a non-hospital basis.

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