Results 7,921-7,940 of 24,635 for speaker:Mary Harney

Written Answers — Hospital Accommodation: Hospital Accommodation (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: The aim of the acute hospital co-location initiative is to make available approximately 1,000 additional public acute hospital beds for public patients by transferring private activity, with some limited exceptions, from public acute hospitals to co-located private hospitals. Co-location is considered the quickest and least expensive means of providing significant additional bed capacity for...

Written Answers — Cancer Incidence: Cancer Incidence (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: Earlier this week my colleague the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government published the report on the assessment of current site conditions at the former Irish Steel facility at Haulbowline. The report was compiled by Environmental Consultants who were engaged by the Minister earlier this year to carry out an independent and rigorous assessment of site conditions. The...

Written Answers — Nursing Home Subventions: Nursing Home Subventions (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: The Nursing Homes Support Scheme Bill 2008 was published on 9 October and the Minister introduced it at Second Stage in the Dáil on 13 November. It is intended to progress the legislation through the Houses of the Oireachtas with a view to implementing the scheme in 2009. Only after the legislation has been enacted, and the scheme commenced, can the Health Service Executive begin to...

Written Answers — Medical Cards: Medical Cards (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: As this is a service matter it has been referred to the Health Service Executive for direct reply to the Deputy.

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I cannot accept the amendment. This would be an entirely new role for the Health Information and Quality Authority. The remit of that authority is to set standards, monitor compliance with those standards and to enforce the standards. It is not to be an assessor of anything relating to the provision of services. That is not an appropriate role for the Health Information and Quality...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: On the Deputy's final point, this is precisely what we are changing by introducing a new contract. It is not acceptable to me, as a citizen and human being, that some people are given preferential access to services which are fully funded by our taxpayers, including the cost of staff. In the past ten days, a friend of mine who telephoned a public hospital to make an arrangement for a parent...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: Yes, but unless one deals with capacity issues——

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I want the level of private activity in our public hospitals to be greatly reduced because the sole purpose of the public system is to serve the medical needs of citizens. As to the question of which body should assess applications and so on and the conflict between being the provider of funding and the provider of the benefit, I am not aware of any health system, either publicly funded or...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I accept that. We must prioritise the services we provide, irrespective of whether resources are made available from general taxation or a combination of social insurance and taxation or private insurance and taxation. It is our priority to ensure terminally ill people are provided with the highest possible quality of service. I am proud that in the mid 1990s, Ireland became the second...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: We do not yet have a licensing regime. As the Deputy will be aware, the Commission on Patient Safety chaired by Dr. Madden recommended a licensing regime. We must introduce such a regime as quickly as possible. However, in advance of doing this we must know what it is we are licensing and what standards are appropriate for the acute and non-acute hospital system. As I have stated...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I will tell the Deputy about a few reports. We mentioned life expectancy earlier. Between 1966 and 1996, people aged 70 added one year to their average lifespan. In the ten-year period between 1996 and 2006 this increased by two years. We have doubled our performance — in fact, it improved six-fold, because that was over a ten-year period as opposed to a 30-year period. Among the...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: Much of it — 60% — is to do with better health interventions. With regard to visits to general practitioners, the evidence, including the SRI survey, shows that a person over 70 who has free medical treatment, if one wants to use that phrase, goes once more often per year than somebody who does not. The average attendance was 5.2, which increased by one visit per year. Equally, it is the...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: There was an implication——

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I agree they are all important issues. I want to deal with the issue of income. First, I will deal with one more item, the waiting times for procedures in comparison with Northern Ireland.

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I will deal with that. The National Treatment Purchase Fund published results today and they show a dramatic improvement. The number of people waiting for procedures is down 60% on this time last year. The waiting time for operations in respect of public patients is now an average of 2.9 months.

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I agree that is an issue.

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: That is an issue and that is why——

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I am responding to a point made earlier about Northern Ireland.

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I apologise, Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I assume we are dealing with that issue too. With regard to the individualisation of assessment, Deputy Barrett is correct that individualisation exists in the taxation system. It was introduced in 1998, I think, and at the time it was quite controversial. One of the reasons for its introduction was to encourage married women in particular back into the...

Health Bill 2008: Committee Stage (11 Dec 2008)

Mary Harney: I accept that but the circumstances then were very different. With the demographic and financial position in which this country finds itself, it is not financially sustainable without substantially reducing other services and therefore being unable to provide for those who will become unemployed and in need of medical cards during 2009.