Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Despite the fact the Minister, Deputy Reilly, has had to operate within a budget which has been reduced by €1.75 billion, which is almost my entire budget for the past two years, and that he has had to operate with 6,700 fewer staff, the system has not only been maintained in some areas, it has even been improved. More people are being treated in our hospitals. There has been a 7% increase in patient discharges. More people have access to free health care than before. Some 125,000 additional medical cards have been issued and now 1.8 million people in the State have a medical card, which is more than ever in the history of the State. That is a real achievement at a time of such austerity. Patients are being treated more quickly. We have 20% fewer people on trolleys than this time last year. No one is waiting for surgery longer than a year and we are moving towards a nine month deadline for inpatient treatment. On the day on which the children's protection amendment was published, we also have 800 fewer children on a waiting list than we did at the time of the general election. These are the facts. Of course, a lot more needs to be done and the Minister has set in train an ambitious series of reforms which will deliver further improvements.

Over the course of the next five years the reformed health service will put patients first and will put their needs at the centre of the system. I know that for patients and their families such improvements cannot come soon enough. We have all had enough of grandiose promises with few significant improvements from Fianna Fáil in government. We now have a Minister with the knowledge, the vision and the determination to deliver ongoing improvements like he has in recent days. There will be lots of difficulties along the way and special interest groups in health are very good at analysing problems and outlining how changes can be brought about, but too often they are unwilling to play their part in the delivery of such change.

The Minister and the Government will deliver reform and will endure no lectures from those who had 14 years at a time of unprecedented wealth to get it right but instead left us with a dysfunctional health system and devastated public finances. We will not take lectures either from those alongside them on the Opposition benches whose only contribution to health care on this island was to fill our hospitals with the victims of their campaign of violence. Indeed many of these people are still alive today and still have ongoing health care and disability related needs.

For all of us in the Government and all of us on the Government benches, change in all areas is not coming as quickly as we would like, and delivering change and driving it is not as easy as it may have appeared when we were in opposition, but the Minister, Deputy Reilly, is making real progress and is making real change happen. He deserves our confidence and our support.

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