James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

Absolutely. I will respond in writing to all the Senators who did not get an opportunity to ask questions. There is no question about that.

Positive things are happening. We have now a new colposcopy unit in the Coombe hospital. We have allocated it the money to do up its labour suite and its theatre, which were located on two different floors. That was unacceptable. We have the new unit for cystic fibrosis opening in St. Vincent's hospital in April next year but, equally, we have sent the message to the hospitals that no patient should be left waiting longer than 12 months. Anybody who was put on a waiting list last December has to be treated by the end of this December. We are very near achieving that. Next year we will make it nine months and the year after that we will make it six months, then three months. We intend to go about this in a methodical fashion.

As I have said in the past, the special delivery unit has given us the headlights. We are no longer driving around in the dark. Next year will be a better year although a very tough year because at least we will have full visibility over our fair deal money from day one. We will keep it centralised and watch what is happening with that. We will have the monthly and fortnightly reporting on finance systems within hospitals to ensure that if they start to go off we will know very quickly. Equally, we have full visibility over waiting times. I do not want to pre-empt anything but we are making very good headway with consultants in regard to changing working practices that will allow us discharge patients on Saturdays and Sundays, make more patients have access to treatments and more patients treated more quickly.

I thank everybody. I restate my commitment and that of the Government to the health reform programme. Even if we did not have the financial morass we have to endure we would still have had to change the health service because it would have broken us if we were to continue along the same lines.