Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I believe that public servants and people more generally are entitled to brainstorm and hold meetings without being secretly recorded. That is a very basic right and entitlement of people. In terms of the relationship between the Department of Health and the HSE, the Minister holds biweekly meetings with the CEO of the HSE, the Secretary General of the Department of Health and the chairman of the HSE board. The Comptroller and Auditor General audits and signs off on the accounts of the HSE. That is how it operates.

More fundamentally, we need to stand back and observe that over the past two years there was record recruitment to the health service. The net figure was 12,500 people. More than 32,000 or 33,000 people gross were recruited. To just stand still, the HSE must recruit 9,500 people every year because of 9,500 people going in different directions and into different careers. That is an extraordinary level of recruitment. The net gain of 12,500 over two years is a record high number of recruitments. Add to that the 4,000 who were recruited as test-and-trace staff and for the vaccination team. A great deal of work went in there. There are 132,000 people now working in the HSE and our health service.

If we stand back from all that, in the past 30 years and 20 years in particular, we have witnessed very dramatic improvements in health outcomes, with major gains in longevity and lifespan. I say that because people need to realise that our investment in health services is delivering dividends, be it in the context of stroke, cardiovascular or cancer strategies. Survival rates in all those key areas have improved significantly over two to three decades. That must be acknowledged in all our commentary on the health service. The health service will always create, understandably and deservedly, issues of concern, given the enormity of it and the proportion of the population it covers.

That said, I am still impatient for reform and progress. An integrated financial management system is required and needed in the HSE. That is absolutely the case. When I became Taoiseach, I told the HSE, the Department of Health and the Minister that we need to modernise the information technology systems in the area of health in the context of the delivery of healthcare services. I refer in this regard to unique patient identifiers and so forth. Covid-19 intervened and, irrespective of what Deputy Kelly says, the HSE and health service rose to the challenge and developed a vaccination programme that is without question one of the best in Europe or the world. We need to acknowledge that.

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