James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

The Government has tackled the real problems in the health service instead of throwing money at them like Deputy Dooley's Government did year after year. A measurable improvement has been brought about by the SDU and clinical programmes. Most importantly, I want to thank the front line staff for their incredible endeavour in not just maintaining safe services, but in reducing the number of people on trolleys by 20% in the first six months of this year. That is measurable. It is not rhetoric or spin. That figure represents nearly 10,000, but the total is still too large and more must be done. More than 3,000 people were waiting for longer than one year for inpatient treatment, but that number has reduced to a little over 100. We will move to a nine-month inpatient time.

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