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

If it was simply a matter of political will on the part of any party or of providing Government funding, the matter would have been resolved by now. That is particularly obvious when one considers that there has been an almost 20% increase in health funding in the past three years. The population has increased and there are now more older people here. There has also been pay restoration but certainly not in the region of 20%. Depending on whose figures one accepts, funding for our health service puts Ireland in the top six or top three in the world on a per-capitabasis. As a doctor who worked for seven years in our health service, including in emergency departments, as a former Minister for Health, as a politician who represents tens of thousands of constituents and as somebody who has elderly relatives who, on occasion, have had to spend time on hospital trolleys, I can say that the Government is doing everything it can to alleviate both the short-term and longer-term issues involved. I do not want any citizen to face the indignity or the clinical risk that comes with a prolonged stay on a hospital trolley.

In terms of what is being done, the Cabinet discussed this matter in detail last week. We are going to continue to press ahead with increasing our hospital bed capacity - increasing the number of acute beds in our system.

That is under way already. Almost 200 new beds have come into the system in the last year. The number of beds in the system increased in the previous year as well. The Minister for Health will bring the bed capacity review to the Cabinet before the end of the week. We have approved the resumption of talks with GPs on a new contract. Obviously, it takes two to tango. We are very keen to have the new contract agreed this year in order that implementation can begin. The position of director of health service reform, as head of the Sláintecare office, was advertised on Friday. I hope we get good applicants for that position.

We want a particular focus on mainstreaming best practice across our health service because there are huge variations. Hospitals like Beaumont Hospital, St. Vincent's University Hospital, Connolly Hospital, Cavan General Hospital and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda have seen considerable reductions in hospital overcrowding. Interestingly, figures from the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation for the eastern region show that last year, overcrowding across the hospitals in Dublin and Naas was at its lowest level since records began, even though there has been a big increase in population and in ageing in that region. There are huge variations across hospitals. I suggest that in the future, we should place a greater focus on mainstreaming best practice where it occurs in the health service, as it often does. We need to make sure best practice is mainstreamed. We need to ensure additional resources are put into rewarding good performance and best practice. We should not always put more resources into systems that do not work.

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