Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

I will share time with Senator Daly. I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Seán Power, and his hard-working officials. I know one of his officials personally because I served with him on An Bord Altranais and I assume he is one of the officials referred to by Senator Ryan as coming up through the system. I do not know any more committed or hard-working official than Mr. Bernard Carey. I have watched him spearhead the nursing agenda through many different stages, increasing the number of places in schools of nursing at a time when no one else contemplated it. There is nothing wrong with the present staff at the Department of Health and Children and long may it last. I wish Mr. Carey well in his new role.

All is not well in health and we on the Government side would be fools to claim it was. However, it is not all bad either and it is a question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. From my vantage point it is half full. All the bad stories we hear every day about health pull at our heart strings and no one is more likely to have her heart torn apart listening to Joe Duffy or Pat Kenny discuss the issue than I. I have children and siblings and know what it feels like when one of them is ill. However, for every bad story we hear, two good stories go unheard.

One such story involved a brother of mine who returned from a long-haul flight with a sore leg. He went to a walk-in general practitioner after a few days and was sent to an accident and emergency unit in St. Michael's Hospital, Dún Laoghaire, as a public patient. The treatment he received was second to none. He was kept in for two weeks as a day patient and now attends a warfarin clinic. As late as this morning a consultant rang him to tell him not to take warfarin because his blood reading meant he did not require any more medication. He was to come into the hospital instead. No one will ever hear that story but that man is singing the praises of the nurses and doctors he met there. The VHI was not involved, everything was done through the public system and he was very well looked after. That is not to take away from the hundreds out there who have a bad experience in hospital.

Leaving aside the political point scoring and the parochialism, the National Children's Hospital is a hospital for sick children throughout the country. It is not a Dublin hospital, it is not a Tallaght hospital or Mater hospital, it is a national children's hospital. The debate is scaring away the top Irishmen and women who have been trained outside the country and who want to come back. When they hear the parochial debate they say to themselves that they are better of in Britain, America or Canada, where they can do what they are asked to do in their job description without politics or religion muddying the waters.

The health budget has increased four-fold since 1997.