James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Ongoing progress is being made in introducing new models of care across all service delivery areas to treat patients at the lowest level of complexity and provide quality services at the lowest cost. The restructuring of the hospital sector has commenced and two pilot hospital groups have been established at Limerick and Galway.

Specific work has been undertaken to enable the introduction of "money follows the patient" funding methodology. This means a patient-centred service. If no patient is treated, no money will be paid. This saved €6m in expenditure on orthopaedic services alone.

Complex negotiations are progressing with the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association to further reduce the price of certain medicines and they will conclude shortly. Ongoing progress has been made in mental health services in the implementation of A Vision for Change, with particular improvements in child and adolescent mental health services. Advances have been made in the care of older people with over 22,000 people in receipt of financial support for long-term nursing home care. A catch up human papilloma virus, HPV, vaccination programme for girls in sixth year of secondary school has been introduced and 48,000 children have been vaccinated to date.

An improved risk equalisation scheme for private health insurance will take effect from 1 January 2013. This will be central to the effective working of a community rated health insurance market. Some €125 million will be collected from the health insurance system by the year end following intensive discussions.

The clinical programmes freed up 70,000 bed days last year. That is a real saving of €63 million. The figure in that respect will be even greater this year - it will be in the region of €90 million. A new clinical programme is being rolled out currently in regard to transitional care for older people in order that those who are in this category will be admitted to a ward, will have

Real people have benefited from these achievements and the Government's reform programme. These are real people. It could be your daughter, my brother, his sister, her mother. There are still too many people waiting and we want to go further and we will.

We now have for the first time, de facto, 24-7 rostering, meaning that consultants will be rostered five days out of every seven, including Saturdays and Sundays. They will be available at night. This will further shorten the stay of patients as we have senior decision makers available 24 hours a day and I believe this will also result in fewer tests saving more money as well. It will also reduce the need for non-consultant hospital doctor overtime. It will also save us some 220,000 bed days at €900 a day. All this will save, conservatively, €200 million in the running of our health services but, most importantly, it will improve the quality of care available to our citizens and will mean that more patients can be treated more quickly. That is the one thing I undertook to do, to change a self-serving system back to a patient-centred service.

I wish to state that in excess of €310 million will be spent on home help and home care packages this year. I want to assure the House that those in need will continue to receive the required service.

We have travelled along way along that road but we have a long way to go. The new consultant arrangements are an important step on that road and I want to thank all those involved for the leadership they have shown in this regard. I have to thank all the clinicians, managers and support staff for their hard work in ensuring that all this has been possible despite the fact that 4,000 people have left the health service in the last year and despite the fact that we are operating under much reduced budgets. To all those who said to us last January and February that the health service would collapse in chaos-----

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