Results 24,301-24,320 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: If that does not happen, we will continue to do more of the same.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: We know that more of the same does not work.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: I did not bring up the fact that Deputy Martin is a former Minister for Health. I brought up a different fact, which I think is important. I mentioned a decision that was taken. It is important for us to double back a bit when we analyse these issues. In 2007, it was decided to start reducing our hospital bed stock. That decision was not made at the time because we were short of money....
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: From 2007 onwards, the number of acute beds was reduced.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats and the Green Party made an ideological decision-----
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: It is not factually incorrect.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: If Deputy Micheál Martin wants to see the figures, they are available in the key trends in health document published by the Department at the end of each year. From 2007 onwards, the number of acute hospital beds was reduced every year. In 2015, however, as Minister for Health, I took the decision to reverse that trend and started to increase the number of acute hospital beds again....
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: The Government decided this morning that we would not oppose the Sinn Féin motion on hospital overcrowding. We want to be in solutions mode and will discuss solutions. For this reason, we will table an amendment, but will not oppose the motion. We hope the debate on the matter this week will be solutions-focused, something I believe we all want. The proposal Deputy Gerry Adams...
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: We are providing additional resources all the time for the health service and people with disabilities. Obviously, we need to establish what additional resources may be required to implement the report in full and apply it to other similar cases. Certainly that is what we intend to do. Sometimes, even when we provide financial resources, we can have difficulty in finding staff. That is...
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: I am still shocked by the overcrowding in our hospitals. I am also shocked that it has taken and is taking so long to resolve it. The figure of 100,000 the Deputy gives does not refer to people who spent the night on a trolley. That is a count done at 8 a.m. and could include people on a trolley for fewer than nine hours, maybe even one hour or two hours. The figures collated by the INMO...
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: In respect of patient experience surveys, when 14,000 Irish patients were asked what they thought of their experience in the health service, never mind what we think, 85% said they had a good or very good experience of our health service. That does not diminish for one second the fact that some patients have a very bad experience of the health service. That is something we need to change....
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: There will also be more staff and money. The increase in the number of beds is happening. I think the figure for this year is 190 additional beds. We do not yet have a figure for next year, but we are working on it as part of the capital plan. There will be more beds this year, as there were last year and the year before. To give the Deputy the figures - in 2017 the number of inpatient...
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: More than 1,200 inpatient beds were taken out of the system by previous Governments-----
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: -----which involved Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats and the Green Party.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: We are reversing that trend.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: We have more staff in the health service. I think the number is now 110,000, up by 10,000 on the figure five years ago. Notwithstanding the problems we are having in recruitment, we now have nearly 10,000 doctors working in the public health service and more consultants than ever before.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: The figure will increase. We have about 1,500 or 2,000 more nurses than we had two years ago. Therefore, there are more beds and staff. There is also more money and there will be more beds, staff and money.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: The point the Government and I continuously make is not that we do not need more resources but that more resources on their own are clearly not enough. Increased resources have not produced the results we want.
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: We do not have any plan to close any emergency department in the State, not least because to do so properly, one would need to make sure patients would be adequately provided for in the next centre, the new hospital or the adjoining hospital and that they would have the capacity to deal with the additional workload. We saw the difficulties faced by St. Vincent's University Hospital when St....
- Leaders' Questions (16 Jan 2018)
Leo Varadkar: When it comes to consultants, I think it was the Hanly report that recommended we needed about 4,000. As that is probably a little out of date at this stage, we will need to update it also. It takes a long time to train a consultant and having trained so long, a lot of them do not want to do certain jobs. We need to be realistic about how many we can recruit on an ongoing basis and...