Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

I believe hospitals can meet the 2010 service plan to which the HSE is committed. I referred specifically to Beaumont, which is a national tertiary referral centre. The financial pressures are enormous and although we have provided some new money for the fair deal scheme, comparing like with like, we have taken an additional €1 billion from the HSE over last year. Approximately €630 million of that comes from staff reductions and the remainder has to come from value-for-money, reductions in drug costs, etc. Notwithstanding these pressures, the activity level at Beaumont was higher over the first four months of this year than in the same period last year.

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