Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To answer Deputy Ó Fearghaíl, the banks now know the circumstances which apply in the vast majority of cases where mortgages were taken out. However, what Deputy Higgins said is not true because one cannot apply generality to all of these cases. There are all individual circumstances and they must be dealt with individually. I came across a case recently where a person with a very good job died. The couple had built an enormous house and it will not be possible to meet repayments on it because the big salary is gone. In other cases small businesses or enterprises were running very well but during the course of the Celtic tiger the owner may have become involved in purchasing a property in Spain or another country and now finds it is dragging down the business. This is a very different circumstance to the previous case. Banks now know the scale in each sector of what must be done. They tell us they have trained their personnel to speak with these people and work out solutions. I would like to see far more comprehensive solutions than putting people on interest only payments for a while. I hope this can apply.

With regard to the Cabinet sub-committee on health, the overseeing role of the sub-committee allows for issues to be discussed, such as how to deal with the backlog of 58,000 medical cards which built up; the process and progress made on dealing with the drugs companies to reach a deal worth more than €400 million over three years; the legislation prepared on risk equalisation; the €125 million secured from the private health insurers for beds in public hospitals; the development of chronic disease management programmes; the provision of the vaccination programme for girls against the human papilloma virus, HPV, in sixth year in secondary school with 48,000 children vaccinated to date; and the commencement of legislation to eliminate restrictions on GPs wishing to obtain contracts to treat public patients under the general medical services scheme. All of these issues are of concern to people every day and can be discussed by the Cabinet sub-committee on health. Without infringing confidentiality, the issues of the day can be raised there. The sub-committee can focus in a very timely way on issues which might in the normal course of events drag on for a very long time. I find that instead of meeting once a quarter or twice a year as they used to, when one requires Cabinet sub-committees to meet more often one gets results. The sub-committees have the potential to focus on an issue, release the pressure, make a decision and move on. The decision made by the Government today on the paediatric hospital threaded its way through information provided to the Cabinet sub-committee.

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