Niall Ó Brolcháin (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Harney. Health is one of the most crucial issues for everybody. Members discuss finance, education and many other issues a great deal but health is the bedrock of our society. A healthy society is crucial for the well-being of our people. I hope we will see more of the Minister and the Ministers of State in the House.

I commend the Minister on her progress with regard to primary health care. We can get extremely upset about the HSE. We can shout and roar about all that is wrong with it, but the reality is to put matters right we must start somewhere. The Minister is embarking on the adoption of what is very much a community-based approach which is the right one to adopt to health care in this country. We see it in A Vision for Change in providing mental health services in the community and the setting up of primary care teams around the country. Regardless of what party one is in, we should be working with the Minister to ensure the speedy roll-out of primary health care services. Unfortunately, this means that some of the health services people know and love must move or we must make changes in certain hospitals.

I thank the Minister for providing for a level of innovation in speech therapy services recently in Galway where she has initiated a pilot project to install a speech therapist in a school. I hope the project will work well. At a time when we have constant difficulties with budgets the only way we will have better health care services is by being innovative and trying innovative approaches to health care provision. Pilot projects are important in that regard.

There are so many matters I want to bring up with the Minister that I will not have time to raise them all. To mark World AIDS Day, I want to mention a few facts. According to the figures for 2009, there has been a 2.2% decrease in the number of new HIV cases diagnosed. In 2009 some 395 new cases were reported, down from 404. The total number of people infected in Ireland at the end of 2009 was 5,647. However, 33% of all newly diagnosed cases are between the ages of 15 and 29 years. Therefore, as well as continuing to inform people, a preventive approach to AIDS is needed.

We need to place much more emphasis on health promotion. When mayor of Galway, I had the pleasure to visit Finland where I met the Finnish health Minister. Finland has the best health service in the world and I heard how it had managed to move from a difficult situation such as that encountered in Ireland to having the best health service in the world. Believe it or not, it has a three-pronged approach to health care and is very much moving towards the community approach that we are trying to adopt in this country. It is important that we look at and try to adopt best practice models.

I want to mention midwife-led care services in maternity hospitals. There is nothing more poignant than the birth of our children. Some 70,000 children are born in Ireland every year and the number has been increasing in recent years. The birth of children is crucial to our society and as such it is important that we get the provision of services right. Most women who give birth do not suffer from ill health and it is important that women have as many choices as possible. Where they opt for midwife-led care services or Domino care — where care is provided before and after the baby is born within the home or a clinic setting — or home births, this works well in many countries. There are also potential cost savings. I urge the Minister to adopt what is considered to be best practice throughout Europe in the area of maternity services.

There has been much criticism of the HSE, rightly so in some cases. There has also been much criticism of the health service in general. The Taoiseach described it as Angola. Therefore, the Minister has an impossible job. Looking at the various things she has done, the mind boggles. What the health service is working on is extraordinary. I want to work with the Minister in completing the roll-out of primary health care teams to the greatest possible extent between now and the end of the Government's term of office.