Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am interested and intrigued by the contribution of Senator Conway Walsh on Sinn Féin's position. Sinn Féin's position on our jobs policy was that we were getting it all wrong. We have created 188,000 jobs over the past five and a half years. Unemployment has decreased from 15% to 7.1%. As a result, we now have more money coming in to provide a better health service. An extra €1 billion is being provided this year to the health service which we would not have been able to put in if people were not back at work. I remind the Senator the level of corporation tax has increased by more than 70%. It is at its highest level ever and will continue to rise in 2017 and 2018 because of the number of companies, the number of people employed, the amount of work being done and the amount of exports. We face major challenges in health and there is no question about this, but we need to look at the entire area.

When Fianna Fáil was in government, it abolished the health boards. The idea was to have a central management system, but it is quite obvious now that this is not working. As I stated previously, the number of managers keeps increasing as does the number of clerical assistants. We have more than 16,000 people in administration. It would be interesting to look at the ratio of administrators to front-line staff in other jurisdictions. This is an area where we need to examine major reform. We need to get value for money. I am not convinced we are getting value for money. We are the second highest contributors to health care in the OECD but we are not getting value for money and we need to look at reforming the system. I ask the Leader for a debate on how we bring about this reform. It is not just with regard to hospitals. Sinn Féin proposed-----