James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I did not interrupt Senator Leyden. I will have plenty to say to the Senator when I get to respond to the issues he raised. On the urgent care centre, I have no knowledge of it being further downgraded and would not support that. The Senator's suggestion in regard to the community employment schemes is a great idea. However, the trade unions could have difficulty with it. They might feel that people coming off community employment schemes were taking real jobs of other people. That has always been an argument. The idea is worthy of further exploration. I will look into the matter of the fair deal scheme not responding in time. On bonuses for efficiency, we have moved away from the bonus culture.

I could not agree more with the Senator in regard to his comments on non-collection of VHI insurance fees. St. James's Hospital developed a system which enables it to collect 93% of outstanding insurance fees. Many of our hospitals are down to 15%, 20% and 25%, which is not acceptable. Work on this is ongoing. It is proposed that the system from St. James's Hospital will be transposed across all hospitals. Managers will be expected to deliver and collect. Some consultants are slow and some might like to use this as an industrial relations tool. However, I have a warning for them: I am prepared to bring in legislation to decouple this completely so that it will not be possible for it to be used in a negative fashion by some consultants. The vast bulk of consultants understand the importance of this to hospitals in terms of their overall funding and ability to deliver services to patients, which is their primary concern. They are co-operative but we need to make it easy for them. They should not have to be running around hospitals looking for files and charts before filling out forms. Again, this is a matter of management and efficiency and it will be done.

Senator Leyden commenced his contribution with the accusation that I had misled the people of Roscommon. To mislead someone means to knowingly say something one knows not to be true. I have no problem putting my hand on my heart and telling this House and the people of Roscommon that I fully believed, from what I knew prior to the election, that it would be possible to keep that emergency department open. On taking up office, I explored every possible way of doing so but was told by HIQA it was not safe. There has been much misinformation in the public arena. A meeting in the Department, which was attended by Ms Tracey Cooper from HIQA, the hospital action committee and Deputies Luke 'Ming' Flanagan, Denis Naughten and Frank Feighan-----