Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We need administrative staff. As somebody who has worked in hospitals for the best part of six years and in general practice for four, I know one needs somebody to answer the telephone, book appointments and look after medical records. Administrative staff may not be front line but one cannot function as a front-line staff member without administrative staff. They should not be dismissed in the way that they are. We also need a lot more IT and IT in the health service is way behind where it should be.

On the issue of universal health care and the bigger plan and vision, as referred to by Senator Cullinane, I want to be clear that I believe it can be done. Universal health care is achievable and it has been achieved in pretty much every other western country in different ways. I fundamentally believe it can be done. Some of the steps we are taking now are steps that do exactly that, such as hospital groups and community health organisations. It is a fact that we will, next year, take the first tangible step towards universal health care by extending GP services without fees to those under six years and over 70 years. The latter will be quite easy because we can use the existing contract but the under six initiative will be quite complicated because we will need a new contract. It is important that the contract be a better contract than the existing one and takes account of aspects such as asthma checks, obesity checks and so on.

We need an individual health identifier because we cannot follow people through the Irish health system at the moment. We are told, and it may well be the case, that there are 360,000 people on waiting lists of some sort but we do not know how many of them are the same people which happens all the time. I did it myself, as a general practitioner, where one dispatches a letter to three or four consultants in the hope of getting one who will see them first. There are people who are on waiting lists multiple times and because we do not have an individual health identifier we cannot track them through the system. Also, we do not know if they have already had investigations done perhaps somewhere else or only a few days ago. A big job needs to be done which is not straightforward but it can be done next year. However, it is important that we do things properly and do them well. We have learned from the Irish Water debacle that it is better to do things slowly, to do them well and to plan them.