Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)

-----or the emergencies we saw GPs deal with in the past in Donegal. They have absolutely nothing to say about those matters.

Neither have they anything to say about the way we are changing the role of pharmacists, GPs and practice nurses to deal with chronic care management. The Minister and the Minister of State, Deputy Shortall, have a vision in this regard but those opposite have nothing to say. These things matter to patients and the people they claim to represent.

Balancing the needs of local communities and access to urgent care with the expectation of how health care professionals believe their patients should be protected can be tricky at times. People who genuinely care about patients do not see the idea of an accident and emergency unit at every crossroad as a way forward. Medicine is changing quite rapidly and we must keep up with those changes, as outlined by the Minister in his contribution. These are the sort of things the Members opposite should be able to discuss.

None of the accident and emergency departments they discussed has any long-term future if it remains as it is now. They must change to have a long-term future. If they do not understand that, they do not understand the health service at all. They are changing dramatically as we speak.

If in a few years time when I am back in general practice, the things that will matter to me are those about which the Minister spoke, namely, admission waiting times in accident and emergency departments, inpatient waiting times, the time between a GP referring a patient for an appointment and the patient seeing the consultant and getting proper access to diagnostics. They are the sort of things I would like to talk about and not the rot we listened to earlier.

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