Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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Question 232: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the latest international comparisons of levels of mortality amenable to health care per 100,000 people for Ireland, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Greece. [41011/08]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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Data on mortality are compiled by the Central Statistics Office and submitted to Eurostat, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for the purposes of standard international indicators. Comparable health information at international level is essential in monitoring and prioritising health issues and in measuring our performance. My Department is actively involved in a number of initiatives at EU and international level to improve the range and comparability of indicators across the health sector.

International mortality data allows detailed comparison by cause of death, age, sex etc. Over the past decade, these data show very dramatic reductions in mortality in Europe but especially in Ireland. Between 1997 and 2005, mortality rates here fell by 27% compared with a 13% average reduction across the EU. The decline in deaths from diseases of the circulatory system has been particularly dramatic with falls of 40% for both ischaemic heart disease and stroke compared with an EU average of 20% for both conditions. These improvements are reflected in very considerable gains in life expectancy which have seen Ireland go from more than 2 years below average EU life expectancy in 1997 to more than a year above it in 2005. Total life expectancy for men and women combined has now reached 80 years of age.

In referring to amenable causes of death, I presume the Deputy is alluding to research carried out by Drs. Ellen Nolte and Martin McKee in 2003 and updated earlier this year. This attempts to identify causes of death which may be particularly amenable to health service intervention. The earlier work refers to data for 1997/8 while the update refers to data for 2002/3. The research shows the potential value of the methodology but also highlights a number of difficulties in interpretation of results. The concept of amenable causes has not been adopted by international organisations as a basis for international comparisons. Nevertheless, it is worth pointing out that while Ireland was in the lower ranking group of countries along with Denmark, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Portugal, it showed the highest rate of improvement (23%) in mortality from amenable causes of all OECD countries between 1997 and 2002. There is no doubt that more recent data (as indicated above) will confirm this trend.