James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I echo what my colleague said in congratulating the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Bruton, and an Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, in ensuring that physical education now becomes a major part of the curriculum. Prevention is better than the cure and habits formed early in life are the ones that stay with us.

I welcome the new HIQA Bill that was passed through Cabinet today. I hope that it will get a speedy passage through both Houses.As things stand, HIQA has a major role to play in regard to our health services in the public sector but none in the private sector. This Bill was being developed when I was the Minister for Health. It has taken a huge amount of work to get the legislation to this point and I congratulate the Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, on getting it through Cabinet today. This is very important from a patient safety perspective. There are lots of clinics, about which we have all heard, that are literally fly-by-night operations. Clinics are being set up and operations are being carried out by people who describe themselves as cosmetic surgeons but who are in fact general practitioners or qualified in some other specialty entirely. I know of one instance where a woman had a procedure carried out which went quite badly wrong. She sought redress and won her court case but the individual involved was not insured. We need HIQA in our private hospitals to ensure standards. Indeed, many public consultants complain about having to deal with the consequences of botched operations in some private hospitals. This is not an attack on private hospitals. The aim here is to protect the reputation of those hospitals that do operate to a very high standard but whose reputation is being damaged by private operators that are not meeting basic standards at all. I truly welcome this Bill and hope that when it is passed, HIQA will ensure that we have competent and properly-qualified staff operating in clinics that are inspected regularly and held to the same standards as those prevailing in our public hospitals and some of our better private hospitals.