Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----what was virtually a ten-year period of capital underinvestment in health care. We are now making up for that and will spend significant amounts of capital on health care infrastructure and provision in the coming years. In the meantime, most in the House would accept that, while people are not getting locally some of the complex operations they need, they are able to access those operations under the NTPF instead of staying on waiting lists for years.

This is a process of incremental improvement year on year as the Government spends more and insists on better management and more efficiency to ensure that, regardless of whether people live on the Beara Peninsula or in Dublin city centre, they can access the services they need, especially if they are elderly persons who need the State's support through health care facilities.

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