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

It certainly has not all been spent, or anything remotely close to it. The target time for approvals is still four weeks.

Deputy McDonald mentioned many of the problems and failings that exist in our health service and she was totally within her rights to do so. On the same basis, for balance and accuracy, it is worth pointing out some of the good things happening in our public health service and we should acknowledge the good experiences most patients have and the really hard work of our professional staff and health service. We should find some space to talk about some of the good things that are happening and I will give a few examples.

The reduced cost of health care will kick in this month. There are reduced prescription charges for those aged over 70 with a medical card and reduced drugs payment scheme charges for those who do not have medical card.

We have the progressive extension of free GP healthcare. We started with the under sixes and over 70s, then moved on to all children with severe disabilities and those in receipt of domiciliary care allowance. Last year, people in receipt of carer's allowance and carer's benefit were included. This year we have a 10% increase to the income limits, bringing in more low income working families to free GP care. We have signalled our intention to extend free GP care to children aged six and seven next year, eight and nine the year after and ten and 11 the year after that.

At long last, we have an agreement with GPs to increase resources and activities in primary care. We will have a 40% increase in resources over three to four years. GPs will take on new work, particularly in the area of chronic disease management, which I believe will make a big difference in the longer term. We have a new staff nurse contract that provides for pay increases for them and important work practice changes that we need to reform our health service. A patient experience survey shows that 83% of patients in our public health service state they had a good or very good experience of our health service.

We have had a considerable reduction in waiting times for operations if we compare where we were 18 months ago. The number of those waiting more than three months for operations is down significantly. I like to use the figures for those waiting for more than three months because no matter how well we run a health service we will always have people waiting two, four or six weeks. For the purposes of this, the figures I will use are for those waiting more than three months. The figure for veins has reduced from 2,000 to 724, down more than half. The figure for angiograms has also decreased by more than half, from 2,000 to 914. The figure for cataracts has decreased by half, from 8,000 to 4,000. The figure for hips and knees is down from 2,400 to 1,777. The number of children waiting to have their tonsils removed has gone down by three quarters, from 2,600 down to 764. There have been some real improvements.

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