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

I thank the Deputy for his comments. In fairness to the previous Government, figures for MRSA incidence were beginning to fall after 2008. It is important that all of us in the House should reassure patients going into hospitals that they will be in a safe place and come out better than when they went in. With hospital acquired infections, sometimes that is not the case and we need to strive to do everything we can to address that. One of the main areas we need to address is the overuse of antibiotics. It often takes doctors - particularly in primary care but also in hospitals - longer to explain to people why they do not need an antibiotic than it does to prescribe it. We need to continue to strive to address that issue. We have made progress, but we need to make much more and we will continue to do that. Patient safety and outcomes must be to the fore of all our policies. As long as we do that, I do not believe we will go too far wrong.

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