Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House and thank him for his statement. I remind my opponent that the health budget in 1997 was €3 billion. By 2007, it was €15 billion but there was not a five fold increase in the services available. There was very little change in that ten-year time period. Since we have come into office and over the past few months in particular, the waiting time for the fair deal scheme has been reduced from 12 to 14 weeks to approximately two to four weeks as a result of opening up nursing home beds, making money available and ensuing applications are processed in a timely manner.

It is important to talk about the numbers when people complain about the health service. We seem to forget the volume with which we are dealing. The total number of outpatient appointments and day case procedures is more than 3.2 million in a 12-month time period. That is a huge number going through the system. In real terms, it is 60,000 people a week attending hospitals. The figure for accident and emergency is 1.2 million attendances per annum, which is approximately 27,000 per week. If there is a 20% increase, that is between 4,000 and 5,000 additional people using accident and emergency departments in any one week. That is a significant increase in a very short timeframe. The Minister is taking the right action in opening additional beds and he has outlined where they will be. He also outlined the fact that 750 additional nurses are working in the service. These are important changes that have occurred.

There has been a great deal of criticism about the number of nurses in this country but the OECD report is quite interesting. It outlines the number of nurses actually working rather than the number of registered nurses and the ratio of nurses per head of population is above average. It is amazing how people distort figures. There is much more that could be done. The main area where we face a challenge is in ensuring we have an adequate number of front-line staff, such as consultants, and adequate availability of space in theatres to do surgical procedures. That is an area on which we need to work.

We also need to engage in long-term planning. We have a hospital which is more than 150 years old and over the past 50 years, bits and pieces have been added on to it without any real long-term planning. Now is the time to start to engage in long-term planning in relation to our health services. We need to put in place plans for the next five, ten, 15 and 20 years. We cannot sort out these problems overnight. The Minister has responded in a very positive manner to the issue in accident and emergency departments. The scare-mongering is uncalled for and is not accurate. It is important we do not give a false impression.

An area we need to examine is the admission to hospital of elderly patients from nursing homes. We need to reduce the number of admissions. I have stated previously that we need to allow nurses to do certain procedures which, at present, can only be done in hospitals but which nurses in nursing homes are competently qualified to carry out. We need to change the regulations to allow qualified nurses, who have the experience, to provide that care in the nursing home without the person being admitted to a hospital.Someone from a nursing home who needs to see a dietician has to be taken into the hospital and reviewed there. There are some issues we could easily deal with and that needs to be done. Overall, the work that is being done by the Minister, his Department and the HSE has brought about changes, is reducing the waiting times and progress is being made. Long may it continue. There is no difficulty about people highlighting issues, but let us be positive about it and about the changes that have been made.