Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to thank colleagues for their support for this Bill; it is great to see the House united on this issue. I want to reiterate that we are on the path to universal healthcare. There are significant problems in our system, as we know. People are waiting too long for care and there are services which are not fully rolled out across the country. There are issues that patients and families are dealing with every day, and every one of us in this House wants to do everything we can to help them as quickly as possible.

It is important, however, to remember that we are making progress and that we are on the path to universal healthcare. We are cutting costs for patients, we are seeing the waiting lists for patients beginning to fall and we are seeing important new services being rolled out across the country. That is important and it is important that we acknowledge the work of our doctors, nurses, health and social care professionals, GPs and all those working in the system, because they often hear a narrative on what is not working.

We understand that and we all must focus on what is not working to make it better but they hear again and again that this and that are not working. The reality is that a huge number of things are working and that we are moving in the right direction. In some cases, like on costs for patients, we are moving rapidly in the right direction. Since this Government has come in the following has occurred: prescription charges have fallen; medical cards for the over-70s have become more accessible; medical cards for those who are terminally ill have become more accessible, moving from one year to two years; inpatient hospital charges for children have been abolished; and tonight we are passing the legislation to abolish inpatient hospital charges for adults. The maximum amount a family will have to pay for medicines in any one month has been brought down to €80. Free contraception has been brought in for women aged 17 to 26 and later this year we will extend that to women aged 16 to 30. We will be introducing GP visit cards for nearly 500,000 men, women and children this year and later this year we will be introducing State-funded IVF for the first time. These things matter and it is important that we acknowledge the progress when it is made, just as we rightly call out the challenges for patients and our healthcare workers when they exist.

A lot of colleagues have spoken about access and it is my top priority and the top priority of this Government in healthcare. We want to provide access for scheduled care, be it for an outpatient appointment or a procedure, as well as access for urgent care, be that through out-of-hours GP services, an injury unit or an accident and emergency department. It is the top priority.

Again, it is important to acknowledge the real challenges for patients and to congratulate the healthcare workers we have on making progress. We are all signed up to the Sláintecare targets that no patient should wait more than ten or 12 weeks for inpatient or outpatient care. I am genuinely happy to be able to share with colleagues that from the Covid peak, the number of men, women and children waiting over those agreed target times has fallen by 150,000. That is a 24% reduction in the number of people waiting; some 150,000 men, women and children. We have a long way to go but it is important progress and I want to commend the doctors, nurses, health and social care professionals and everyone who has been involved in making sure we are moving in the right direction.

Many colleagues have quite rightly said that we need more beds, and colleagues have referenced safe staffing. Safe staffing is being rolled out and it is funded. For example, University Hospital Limerick was referenced earlier and safe staffing for both phases 1 and 2 of nurses in the wards and the accident and emergency department are fully funded. The hospital, therefore, is fully sanctioned to hire into those roles. Deputy Joan Collins and other have said we need more beds and we do. We also need more clinicians. While we say that, it is important that we also recognise that over the last three years we have added a huge number of extra beds. We have added nearly 1,000 extra hospital beds and we have added a huge number of staff to the workforce. This year it is our intention that we will have a fourth record year in a row for hiring into our public health services.

Because we are building and staffing all the extra beds and because we are rolling out the community-based services and giving access to diagnostics at a level we have not seen before, our health service is beginning to manage the increased demand from our population, partly due to Covid and partly due to a growing and ageing population. While managing that, it is also driving down the waiting lists. We are doing that because we have expanded capacity to a level that has not been seen in a long time, and working with the HSE and the Department. Most importantly, we are also working with front-line clinicians to do things differently. We have two Deputies here from Waterford and we know that University Hospital Waterford's accident and emergency department is being run incredibly well. We know that some of things that work in University Hospital Waterford are not being done in some of the other hospitals, including in some of the other hospitals that may have some of the loudest voices in wanting more capacity. They may be right on needing more capacity but we are also right about them needing to work in different ways and looking at places like Waterford, Portlaoise and Tullamore and other hospitals-----

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