James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I am not aware that there is only one officer. As far as I am aware there are several. A group was established by me last year to address the issue of discretionary medical cards. The group is made up of doctors. Like the Senator I believe that people who are terminally ill should have a medical card and should not have to endure the stress of a lengthy application procedure. Also, there are many things available through the medical card that money cannot buy. These are simply not available to a private patient.

On organ transplant, Senator Ó Clochartaigh expressed concern about what would happen if the airport was gone. We have an agreement with the Air Corps which allows us to transport organs back and forth without reliance on an airport.

It was stated that 158 people are leaving Galway west HSE. There are contingency plans in place to ensure services there continue. The Senator stated there are not enough people to roll out the primary care teams. I do not believe that is the case. It may not be possible to achieve full primary care teams but I have never promised to be able to do that in the short term. I have in the past been a great critic of statements to the effect that there are 359 primary care teams. I want that qualified in terms of how many are fully functioning, how many are partly functioning and how many are there in name only. As far as I am aware, this breaks down roughly to a third each.

On St. Francis's community nursing unit-----