Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As Taoiseach, I am head of the Government and it is my responsibility to drive the implementation of the programme for Government. The programme for Government includes an extensive section on health. It is my responsibility to work with the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, to ensure that it is implemented and that is exactly what I intend to do.

In terms of the Sláintecare report, the Minister, Deputy Harris, has been tasked with providing a reasoned response to it. That should be done by September or October. Proper costings and due diligence need to be done. Having read the report, it seems to be silent or open on a funding model. It does not propose a particular new funding model. It just suggests that the health service should be funded from a number of sources, some of which it is already funded by.

The Deputy mentioned the trolley numbers for the first six months of this year, which once again demonstrate the enormity and scale of the challenge ahead of us to turn our health service around and do that in a sustainable way. I had a very useful meeting with the Minister, Deputy Harris, and the Secretary General of his Department last week, and we are going to try to develop some plans to turn things around. However, what is often interesting in these matters is not the exceptions but the stark contrasts in performance from hospital to hospital, to which the Deputy drew attention. These are figures produced by the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation which show that, for example, in Beaumont Hospital the number of people on trolleys is at its lowest since records began. The same applies to Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown and St. Vincent's Hospital has the second lowest number. We need to ask the fundamental question: why is there such an enormous variation in performance? One of the worst performing hospitals, for example, very disappointingly, is St. Luke's in Kilkenny, which has a new emergency department and many additional staff, yet Beaumont Hospital, which has had no extra beds or staff and is serving an ageing population, has had its best performance in ten years. Connolly Hospital, my local hospital, which is located in an area with a rapidly expanding population, has had the lowest trolley numbers since the nurses started counting them. That tells us a story about the health service. The constant solution that has been put forward is that it is all about putting more staff and more resources into the same system, but clearly that is only one part of the solution, because we see demonstrably that good management-----

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