Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am communicating with them but I am not getting through.

The purpose of this Bill is to ensure that digital health records are used safely and effectively to improve healthcare in Ireland. This is an extremely important issue. Maybe we have let it slip in the past number of years. We have not kept up to speed with what was going on around the world.

Something that has been making headlines and raising eyebrows is the cost of Ireland's new children's hospital or, as some like to call it, the billion-euro playground for future doctors. From band aids to billions, our little patients are getting a hospital with a price tag that could make even the most seasoned accountants break into a sweat. That is if the hospital is ever finished. The original cost of the project in 2016 was €650 million. It was supposed to be completed within four years. In 2018, the cost more than doubled to €1.7 billion. Then, in 2022, Covid-19 delayed construction. The cost at that point was estimated at €2.24 billion. No doubt that is going to increase again. According to BAM in the courts, it looks as though the Government is to blame or that the Government is the source of the problem.

When the hospital is eventually built, it is no doubt going to be understaffed as a result of a shortage of doctors and nurses. Our doctors and nurses are educated and then head off to other countries where hospitals are not overstretched or understaffed. We want to try to address the shortage of healthcare professionals. We must increase the salaries of primary care physicians and nurses to ensure that they remain here. We need to provide forgivable interest-free loans for Irish students to study medicine, with an attached agreement that they practise in Ireland for seven years after completing their education. Otherwise, any subsidies must be repaid. We want to subsidise rent or State-owned accommodation for healthcare professionals on low wages for a period of up to five years following entry into service. We must restore funding for school dentists to allow them to provide care in respect of long-term dental problems. We must increase the number of medicines that pharmacists can prescribe in to reduce the pressure on doctors. We met with pharmacists in Dublin earlier today.

Hospital waiting times here are the longest in the EU. Ireland has a shortfall of 1,000 hospital beds according to a study compiled by the ESRI in 2023. The waiting time at accident and emergency at that point was 12 hours. The waiting time for children was higher than 13.5 hours. In July of this year, hospital waiting times here were the longest in our history. We must introduce a new healthcare model to allow for 24-7 treatment. We already know this is possible because private hospitals operate this system. We want to increase funding to small regional hospitals that can provide urgent and routine care to people who do not reside in large cities, which is 45% of the population. This will also alleviate pressure on large hospitals in urban centres.

We want to establish a public-private partnership that helps reduce waiting times for medical care. We must introduce a reimbursement scheme for private hospitals similar to that which obtains in the North. If hospital visits in the North can be reimbursed, I cannot understand why we cannot reimburse them here.

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