Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government's priority in the area of health is to ensure that patient care is at the top of all considerations. It is unfortunately the case that budgets for the health services have had to be reduced in recent years. As we know, that is because the present Government inherited an incredible mess in the public finances. There is no doubt that this year will also be challenging for the health service, but the Government's priority is protecting front-line services and patient safety. In particular, we want to ensure priority is given to patient safety and care for children. That is something we certainly want to see taking place.

Within that challenging financial environment, we have been progressing the reform of the health services. The reforms are long overdue. They involve changes in the way in which our hospitals are configured to ensure patients get the best care. They also involve a move to universal health care and universal health insurance. In this year's budget we announced the first steps in that direction with the introduction of free GP care for children under five years. I recognise there are continuing challenges and problems in the health services. These have to be addressed and we are working on them. We have made considerable progress despite having less money and fewer staff. We are undertaking the biggest reform of the hospital system in the history of the State, including changing the way in which consultants work and the introduction of universal health insurance. We have reduced waiting lists and numbers of patients on trolleys. Since the middle of 2011 we have established 32 new primary care centres, introduced free GP care for children aged five and under and committed to the construction of the national children's hospital and a new national maternity hospital, for which €200 million was provided in the budget. The number of patients waiting on trolleys has been reduced by 30% since the Government took office. The number of adults waiting more than 12 months for inpatient and day care surgery decreased by 73%. Progress is being made but, in a service which is demand-led and in which the demands are growing all the time, clearly more needs to be done.

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