Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Harty, as a medical practitioner, speaks from a position of knowledge in respect of many of the issues he raised. We will put €14.5 billion into the health system this year, more than ever before. In some cases, the response is not what we might expect in terms of the excellence in governance and other areas to which the Deputy referred. The work that he spoke of is part of an ongoing process.

This morning the Cabinet approved legislation dealing with a reduction in prescription charges for those over 70, and we approved the inclusion in that Bill of 10,000 medical cards for children in receipt of domiciliary care allowance. There are reports showing a dramatic reduction in cancer rates among children compared to a few years ago. If we were to start with a greenfield situation we might organise the structure of health services around the country in a very different way but many hospital facilities are now state-of-the-art. A major infrastructure programme is to be carried out in the future and we are building a range of primary health care facilities around the country, which are expected to operate on a full-time basis so that people do not have to go to hospital in the first place.

Nobody could disagree with the Deputy's principle of clinical excellence matched by excellence of governance. There has to be an administrative capacity to back up clinical excellence and there is always a demand for this capacity but for many years this country has been behind in its digitisation capacity, whereby we could save time, create efficiencies and make people aware of the scale of what we do. Those at the front line provide a service beyond criticism and those who have moved through centres of excellence will point that out. With an ageing population there are always difficulties and that is what an effective, high-standard health care system is about. The Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, and his Ministers of State are working diligently on this so that we can have a healthy, active and understanding Ireland and can have medical facilities and services as close to people as possible. It is not perfect, by any means, but it is the source of the allocation of €14.5 billion in 2017, an extraordinary amount of money for a small country.

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