Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The health service has been and always will be made up of urgent issues waiting for the next emergency. Deputy Kelleher and his party, who collapsed the economy of this country, did nothing to help to improve that situation. If there is one thing that the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, should be given credit for it is that he is starting to change the mindset within the health services and is making changes which were only given lip service prior to this. For instance, we have started the concept of universality in health. Nobody expects our children to pay for their primary education. Why should we expect our children to pay for their health care? We have started the process of giving free GP care to every child under six and I hope that as the years go by we will improve that universality for not just our children but for everybody who lives in our country. That is a change in the way we view our health service. We see it now as a right and not as something that will be provided at the behest of whatever government is in power.

There has also been another significant mindset change introduced under the current Minister, namely the concept of disease prevention and chronic disease management. Under the contracts that are now being delivered to GPs we have, for the first time ever, a diabetic care management programme for patients in community care and a proper asthma management programme for young children in our communities. This has been discussed by Members on all sides of this House for the past 20 years but for the first time ever it is actually happening.

I would ask that when Fianna Fáil goes to the trouble of tabling motions about accident and emergency departments that it might actually be brave and offer solutions to the really difficult problems that exist in our health service. I would point Deputy Kelleher to the large number of people who are admitted to hospital beds from our accident and emergency departments across this country because they are abusing alcohol or other drugs. If we managed to half that number of admissions we would have no patients on trolleys. This is an issue that has been with us for years and we need to have a really serious conversation about it in this House, rather than just the point scoring that we are seeing here again tonight.

Deputy Kelleher must admit that his motion offers nothing other than more money and back to the future with the national treatment purchase fund, NTPF, something that has been around for years.

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