Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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The national service plan is the first such plan to be submitted to a Minister for Health and Children under section 31 of the Health Act 2004. The plan covers all the main programmes of care and treatment of the health services and sets down projected activity levels for those programmes. The plan also describes the objectives of the programmes and the actions to achieve these objectives. It describes the key issues for the year ahead and the mechanisms to monitor them. Initiatives in regard to research, quality, evaluation and value-for-money are also discussed.

Under the targeted services to be delivered this year 29,195 older people will receive home help services, with almost 7 million hours of services provided. Some 25,374 older people will avail of day care and almost 5,500 respite care. Almost 19,500 people aged 75 and over will receive continuing care in a residential setting. Acute hospital services will provide more than 1 million patient treatment episodes, of which more than 564,000 will be inpatients and over 504,000 day patients. It is anticipated there will be in excess of 2.5 million outpatient attendances and over 1.23 million accident and emergency department attendances. In regard to ambulance services, it is anticipated there will be 235,000 emergency and 250,000 non-emergency calls dealt with in 2005.

I have approved the plan which is based on some €11.5 billion provided in the Estimates for the Health Service Executive. The implementation of the plan is the operational responsibility of the HSE and it will be monitored by my Department and the HSE during the year. The executive will report to me on a regular basis during the year in regard to the achievement of targets described for each programme.

I appreciate the work of the board of the executive and its management in producing the plan which I regard as a comprehensive document covering all the key areas of activity during 2005. Work will continue in the HSE in co-operation with my Department to further develop the service plan for 2006.