John Crown (Independent)

Perhaps the Leader would bring the following comments to the attention of the Minister for Health. First, I wish to talk about sin. The capital sin in a recession is not the spending of money, it is the wasting of money. A hugely wasteful spend is occurring in our health service right now. Figures emerged last week that showed 350,000 Irish citizens on some type of waiting list for hospital care. When one does the arithmetic, that works out at about 8% of the entire population being on a waiting list. That is simply staggering by international standards. When one considers we also have a much higher than average percentage of patients in this country with private health insurance – there are waiting lists in the private sector as well – the number of public patients who do not have a private option, who are waiting for public health care at any given time is probably something in the order of 11% to 12%.

We have all been through the moral, societal and ethical issues, but I wish to put one other thought into the Minister's head. There is an economic imperative to reform the health system and rid us of this problem. How many patients on waiting lists are out of work because they are waiting for medical care to go back to work? How many children are not able to hear what their teacher is saying because they are on eight to ten month or one year waiting lists to get their hearing tested? How many elderly people need a family member to care for them because they cannot see while they are waiting to get a cataract dealt with or cannot walk while they are waiting to get their hip replaced? Such a family member is a potential economic contributor to society who is taken out of the workforce. How much more expensive is it to deliver care when that care is delayed? We have hard figures which show that the average Irish child who needs corrective spinal surgery for scoliosis and kyphosis - diseases of curvature of the spine - has 10° more curvature than their European peers. What about the economic cost of the under-use of staff who are sitting around because wards have been closed and they cannot process patients through an operating theatre because it has been closed? All of those pathologies are due to the primary funding mechanism of the health service and its bureaucratic structure.

I ask the Leader to bring these problems to the Minister's attention because, to date, the political response has been to impose further bureaucracy and not to deal with the fundamental problem. I am concerned that the visceral reflex of the people who run our health service - the bureaucrats - to the other figures on health service overspends we have seen emerge will be to close wards and theatres, curtail services and lengthen waiting lists rather than increase efficiency.