James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I am not aware of subsidies going to private consultants. I want to correct Deputy Boyd Barrett. The figures he alluded to are an improvement on the 569 people in our accident and emergency units in January. We are going about this in a systematic way. As I said, we cannot change things overnight. I have told the House that no man is an island and, in the same way, no part of the health service operates on its own. One cannot fix the problem in the emergency department without fixing the problem in respect of inpatient beds and having more community facilities, including home-care packages, home helps and the provision of long-term care in order that people can leave hospital. One cannot fix it unless one fixes the problem in the primary care system to allow it to address more of the problems, including providing greater access to diagnosis and chronic illness care in the community, in order that people do not fall ill and end up in hospital. It is all interlinked. All of the hospitals to which we have given special support in the last week have included a combination of all these items as part of their initiatives, including an increased number of home-care packages, long-stay beds and short-term convalescent beds in associated hospitals, as well as more staff and beds in specific areas.

Much and all as we would love to be able to flick a switch and turn things around, that is not the way things operate. Since the orthopaedic initiative was introduced, for hip and knee replacements, we have saved in the region of €6 million. We did this by insisting on patients being admitted on the day of the procedure, not the night before.

See this speech in context