Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to return to a matter which was previously raised with the Minister, which is nurses. Obviously, we owe everybody in the front line a huge debt of gratitude, including nurses. We all have stood and applauded them, but nurses cannot live on applause alone. None of us can, although applause for politicians is rare and, maybe, deservedly so. Will the Minister set a deadline by which he will use his legal powers to force through the pay agreements that were entered into, if they are not already implemented by a certain point?

We have talked a lot about mental health today. Will the Minister have a representative of psychiatrists, who are the people responsible for the delivery of mental health services according to the system in Ireland, appointed to NPHET, so that they can participate in the decision-making that it undertakes?

The Minister talked about a new way of doing medicine. The deal that was done with the private hospitals, and the effective takeover of the private hospitals, is not something that I would dare to criticise because nobody at the time knew what we were facing. Thankfully, our hospitals have not been as overwhelmed as we feared and those private hospitals have not been working to capacity or anything like it. I believe the Minister gave figures for the Bon Secours in Cork. Will he confirm that 142 beds are being used in the hospital at present out of its 300-bed capacity and that it is the hospital which is being most used? All the others are working at even lower capacity.

Is it the case that the doctors who work in those hospitals can no longer carry out any work for private patients, even on a pro bonobasis? Is it the case, for example, that they are no longer able to have a colposcopy, which is a testing procedure for cervical cancer, carried out in respect of an ongoing patient if they have not signed the new contract? If so, that would be, we will all agree, very worrying.

Finally, I understand NPHET is looking at a proposal to carry out non-elective work in those private hospitals now because there is capacity in them but that there is an anticipated budget of €115 million per month. The budget for all of that work last year in the national planning framework, NPF, was €75 million as opposed to €115 million for a month. There may be many reasons for that increase but it looks like it could be a very bad deal for the Exchequer at a time its returns are plummeting. There are many questions there but I would appreciate answers to at least some of them.

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