Sean Barrett (Independent)

I welcome the Minister and wish him well in a job that proved so difficult for so many of his predecessors. His problem has more to do with resource allocation than with budgets. I refer, briefly, to an bord snip's report. On page 76, in regard to the health service, it states:

The Group observes that restrictive agreements and work practices, involving trade unions and professional staff organisations, have been a major inhibitor to staffing and pay efficiencies in the health sector, and a block to good quality patient-focused care. The Group considers that such practices have no place in an efficient, modern health system which is operating under severe budgetary constraints, and in which the needs of patients should be of paramount consideration.

Will the Minister respond to that? The numbers in the health service were increased from 68,000 staff in 1997, to approximately 113,000, an extra 45,000 staff, yet the Minister complains in this Chamber that he is short of staff. Who is winding up politicians? The Florence Nightingales in the Irish health service are not serving themselves other than in a very narrow way.

A budget of €17 billion, with 25% added when we pay privately, is a large one by OECD standards. I put it to the Minister that there is too much specialist pleading by the medical sector, all 113,000 of them. The Department did not realise that competing health insurance companies would save it money. Its hostility, towards BUPA in particular, was wrong in terms of the efficiency lost by going for monopoly in that field.