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

I beg the Deputy's pardon.

Deputy Tóibín stated the health service is in crisis. I accept and acknowledge that we face a serious challenge and that a great deal of money has been taken out of our budget and many staff have left but if it is in crisis now, the Deputy should consider the position before I became Minister. A total of 34% fewer people have to endure long trolley waits now than in 2011. On one day in January that year, 569 people lay on trolleys throughout the State. We have reduced that number by 34% but there are still too many lying on trolleys and we continue to work on this. I commend the men and women working in our health service who have achieved this, despite a 20% reduction in budgets and a 10% reduction in staff.

More than 90% of people last year were treated within nine months of going on an inpatient waiting list and during 2011, we had reduced the waiting time to a year. Prior to that, people were waiting two years. In addition, more than 90% of patients have been seen and had an endoscopy within the 12-week target we set while more than 90% of children have undergone inpatient treatment in less than 20 weeks. That is not a health crisis spiralling out of control; that is a health service, which is recovering and starting to do things in a different way. I again thank the men and women who work in the service.

I am sure there have been sad cases of loss of life due to meningitis. It is a dangerous, septicaemic-type condition but, thankfully, vaccines against a number of strains of the disease are available now and these have reduced the death rates. I would like the details about the ambulance wait to which Deputy Tóibín referred. He also raised the issue of strokes. Our clinical programmes have taken us from the bottom to the top of the league in Europe through the use of thrombolysis. In two years, we are at a point where we are saving one life a day as a result of a stroke through the use of stroke units and thrombolysis and we are also preventing three people a day from going into long-term care. There have been considerable improvements in our health services but we have a long way to go. We face serious challenges, as does the country. We expect to exit the bailout next month and that is another key step along the road to recovery. Deputy Tóibín will be very much in favour of us taking back our financial sovereignty and making decisions for ourselves.

The Bill is about supporting community rating through the methodology of risk equalisation and it is not about making health insurance more expensive for people.

It is about enshrining the concept of social and intergenerational solidarity to which all sides of the House espouse. I commend the Bill to the House.

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