Mary Henry (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State. I found these two reports extremely interesting reading. I have been reading reports on the health service for quite a while now – I remember when the Fitzgerald report was issued because it resulted in my having to do a great deal of extra work. Professor George Fegan, for whom I worked at the time, was involved with the report and I remember the grave disappointment when it was not implemented, despite all the work that went into it. The Fianna Fáil Party was largely responsible for its non-implementation. So much time and money would have been saved if it had been implemented. An amazing amount of what is being criticised in the health service was actually foreshadowed in the report. It was an attempt to prevent waste in some areas.

The most important conclusion that can be drawn from both reports is that there is a dreadful information deficit in the Department of Health and Children. It will be very hard to move on unless something is done about this. Since Deputy Michael Noonan was Minister for Health and Children – about eight years ago – I have been asking for a population register in order that if we introduce a scheme, we will have some idea how many people will be involved and when they will be called for screening. When I asked for the population register to be established, Deputy Noonan was establishing BreastCheck. We then had no notion of how many women should be coming forward to be screened each year. Lists were being made up from the GMS and the VHI and people are still being left out now. The most obvious example of how important it is for us to set up a population register immediately is the medical card scheme for the over-70s, in which there were twice as many eligible to apply for a medical card than had been expected, at a huge and unexpected cost to the State. I hope a register is being set up and that this dreadful information deficit is being rectified because it is one of the most important things that needs to be done.