James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

There you go. Not being of a superstitious nature I do not see any problem with that date. That is what the law requires me to do and that is what will be done. The Deputy opposite has correctly highlighted the difficulties that will arise in maintaining services. That will be especially so if it is to be business as usual, but it will not be business as usual. In reply to a previous question I mentioned some of the initiatives taking place between clinical programmes and their implementation with the help of the special delivery unit, SDU. We have seen initiatives such as the orthopaedic initiative which has resulted in savings of €6 million across orthopaedic services by insisting that patients would be admitted on the day of the procedure not the night before. If patients are admitted on the day of the procedure we pay the hospital directly. In the acute medical assessment unit in Cork we have avoided the admission of patients and saved 11,000 bed days in a six month period. That could lead to a saving in that hospital alone of more than €10 million - I am told between €15 million and €17 million - in a full year. We will have precise figures on that. Not transposing excellence across the system has been the big failure of the HSE in the past. We intend to ensure the system is transposed through the efforts of the SDU and those working within the system who are buying in to these new ways of doing business in a major way because they see that it improves patient care, the number of patients that can be treated and it makes it easier for them to do their job.

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