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

It is a vast improvement on what we had in the previous Government where collective decision-making is concerned. Everyone is actually involved in making the decision. People get papers before the meeting happens rather than big decisions being made at the last minute, often following a diktat from the EMC and its members.

Cabinet meets once a week, sometimes more frequently. We will have two meetings next week and possibly a third. That is the way I like to run things. There are also lots of Cabinet sub-committees. We have one nearly every week. It depends on the issues arising. The Brexit committee now almost never meets because we discuss Brexit at every single Cabinet meeting. There is also a separate officials' group. Brexit affects everyone and I want everyone around the table. We spent the best part of an hour on it today and will do so again next week.

There are often areas that do not involve everyone but do involve several Departments, and that is where the Cabinet sub-committees come in very useful. Deputy Howlin mentioned the Garda reform programme. Our response to the O'Toole commission's recommendations went to the Cabinet sub-committee before it went to the full Cabinet, because that did not involve everyone but it did involve a critical mass of Ministers. Last week, the Cabinet sub-committee on infrastructure focused on the inter-agency report on homelessness. That did not impact on everyone but it did impact on four or five Departments which were represented, including the Departments of Health, Justice and Equality and Employment Affairs and Social Protection. We also discussed the advances that the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, is making on realising the affordable childcare scheme at a Cabinet sub-committee meeting last week.

Different mechanisms are available. Everyone is present at Cabinet; all the politicians who hold ministerial office are around the table with the Secretary General of the Government. Cabinet sub-committees can also come in useful but there is a downside to them. With so many Ministers on each committee plus their officials and advisers, these are meetings of 30 or 40 people. Anyone who attends meetings knows the difference between getting things done at a meeting of ten people and a meeting of 40 people. I also meet Ministers bilaterally. I am in the process of meeting Ministers individually, along with their Secretaries General and their main advisers, in order to review progress and work in the various Departments.

Deputy McDonald mentioned the Euro Health Consumer Index, which was released in the last few days. She neglected to mention that the ranking of the quality of our health services went up by two points. It is major news when we go down but when we go up it barely makes the news at all. It is important to take these things with a pinch of salt. It is a private company based in Sweden. It is not the World Health Organization or The Lancet, but it is still an interesting index.

In regard to waiting lists, the Deputy is quite right. That is an area where we have not made sufficient progress. However there are different waiting lists. The waiting lists for operations and procedures is very much going in the right direction. As of the end of last year, the number of patients waiting for an operation or a procedure-----

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