Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Will it take us time to get to where we need to be? Absolutely, but the era of Ministers for Health being obliged to stand in this position and cut health services due to the financial situation is over. We are increasing the health budget and staffing levels and are putting money into waiting list initiatives. In the House later tonight we will pass legislation to provide domiciliary care allowance medical cards for approximately 10,000 children with disabilities. We are recruiting again. During the three days at Christmas which the Deputy spoke about, we hired 115 new nurses. This year, we have a target of 1,200. Because of the talks we had with the INMO, we have a much better set of proposals to try to attract those nurses.

We are reducing prescription charges for people over the age of 70 with a medical card and their dependants, which means 390,000 people will see a real difference when they go to the pharmacy each month. We must do more about it. As we all know, it is not just an issue of funding. If it were an issue of funding, some of the issues the Deputy is raising would not have existed during the Celtic tiger era. It must be about how we deliver the service, the work of the Oireachtas Committee on the Future of Healthcare and moving to primary care. I do not deny that there is a major challenge and a huge amount of work but these are the steps we want to take.

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