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

In addition, we have reduced prescription charges and will do so again in the next couple of weeks. Sláintecare, which the Deputy advocates for and supports, recommends that we extend free GP care to an extra 500,000 people a year, that is, 500,000 this year, 1 million next year and 1.5 million the year after. I think that the Deputy's recommendation is a mistake because it is too fast. I do not think the capacity to increase free GP care as quickly as he advocates, that is, an extra 1 million in two years and an extra 2 million in four years, exists in our GP surgeries. I think he is mistaken in that regard, although I recognise that he is a strong advocate of the Sláintecare report.

We are also investing in primary care centres. There are now 120 primary care centres open throughout the country, while there were only 40 a few years ago. We have set aside a ten-year capital budget envelope for health, which is a multi-annual budget if ever there was one. It provides for €11 billion, which is double what it was for the past ten years. As a result, three new national hospitals are under construction, with one to go to tender quite soon.

There is investment in ICT. The medical laboratory information system, MedLIS, is now available almost across the board, allowing people to see blood results all over the place. There is also the picture archiving and communication system, PACS, and what replaced it in radiology, and there is the maternal health record, where women who attend maternity hospital now have electronic records which they did not in the past. We are introducing reforms such as a commissioning model, where the National Treatment Purchase Fund is used to commission operations and procedures, which is why the waiting times for those waiting more than three months for an operation or procedure has fallen for months.

We are increasing bed capacity, by 200 last year and approximately another 200 this year. I visited Clonmel the other day, where there is a new 40-bed unit under construction, while the Minister for Health recently gave approval for an extra 60 beds in Limerick. As a result, the number of patients on trolleys thus far this year, while still far too high, is at its lowest in four years, and let us hope that will continue.

The next large step is contractual reforms for GPs and we are in negotiations with the Irish Medical Organisation, having concluded talks with the nurses on a new contract for them. We are keen to get that done to provide additional resources for general practice, that is, not just additional money for doing the same things but rather for change, embracing medicines management and ICT, giving information that we need to plan our health services and providing new services, particularly in the field of chronic care.

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