I acknowledge that there has been a reduction in the number of long waiters, which is important, but the Minister will accept that the overall waiting lists are still too high. For some time, I have called for the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, to publish all waiting lists. Currently, it only publishes acute hospital waiting lists. For transparency purposes, it would be better if community, diagnostic, mental health, children's disability network team and other specialised waiting lists were published so t…

It is important that we welcome the contract and attract more consultants. In tandem with that, though, I have been hearing from consultants for many years that they need more access to hospital equipment, including diagnostic equipment, and surgical theatre capacity. We will ratchet up the number of consultants working in our public system, but many of the current cohort are battling as we speak to get access to precious surgical theatre capacity. This is an important issue. We need to consider consultant packages…

When I submitted this question, many health workers had not received their cost-of-living pay increase under Building Momentum. I very much hope that since submitting the question that there have been positive developments. I look forward to the Minister’s response. It is important that we value public healthcare workers. When pay increases are put in place, they should be delivered quickly. The same is true of the pandemic bonus payment. People should not be waiting. I hope that since I submitted this question tha…

The Minister will accept that it is unacceptable that many of those healthcare workers will have to wait until after Christmas to receive a payment that was due in October. Many workers in nursing homes and elsewhere have also not received their pandemic bonus payment, albeit they are not public sector workers. This speaks to the issue of the need for an integrated financial management system and an integrated IT system so that we do not have these complicated systems that do not allow us to move quickly. Most work…

The Minister will accept that a 3% increase is modest. It is welcome and deserved by workers but we are in the throes of a cost-of-living crisis in which inflation is running high. For many workers, any pay increases is just allowing them to stand still to meet all the rising costs and so on. A priority for all of us with an interest in healthcare, in addition to all the other things we are trying to get done, is to ensure we have proper IT systems and that, once and for all, we deal with all the legacy issues. On …

In page 4, between lines 9 and 10, to insert the following: “ Amendment of section 7F of Principal Act 3. Section 7F of the Principal Act is amended, in subsection (4A)- (a) in paragraph (a), by the substitution of “4.4 per cent per annum” for “6 per cent per annum”, (b) by the deletion of paragraph (c).”. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Butler. Last year, the Government provided for an increase in reasonable profit on insurance policies from 4.4% to 6% by 2024. We tabled an amendment last year to reverse t…

I am sorry, but I do not accept that. We have a very important Bill coming up, which we all want to get to, and there is going to be an extended time for that discussion, so I am not going to hold up the Minister of State or anybody else. I will press the amendment without calling for a vote.

I thank the Minister for the briefing provided today by his officials. We had a number of conversations on this issue in recent days. I will start with an observation that I have stated privately to the Minister. It is also important that I put on the record that everybody wants to arrive at the same place. That position is genuinely held by everybody in this Chamber. We all know how emotive the CervicalCheck scandal was and we all want to make sure that duty of candour and open disclosure is what it is. We have ar…

Agreed.

Exactly.

The very fact that we are now looking at an amendment which might take some time to be crafted is a vindication of what we have been saying, which is that we need to go through this legislation properly and thoroughly and get it right. I welcome the fact that there has been movement on this issue. This makes sense because it places a legal obligation on the clinician to inform a woman who is diagnosed with cancer - which would involve trauma for any woman, or for any patient for that matter - that there is now this…

Hear, hear.

On a point of order, given the Minister has committed we would adjourn at 9.20 p.m., it would be better were the Minister to adjourn it now and were we to come back in January. We have an agreement on how an amendment might look. There is disagreement on the anonymised system. We will continue to have discussions on that. We have not reached agreement and we still hold hope there will be movement. However, it would be better were the Minister to adjourn it now, if that is within the rules.

If they ask.

Is it open disclosure if the women have to go and ask?

Two hours have been allocated for that debate.

Sinn Féin will support this Bill, as we always do. It is an annual Bill to review the risk equalisation mechanism that supports the community-based health insurance market. It revises the stamp duty levy on policies and the risk equalisation credits payable to insurers for 2023. It is a self-funded system. Risk equalisation as a principle ensures that costs are constant across the life span of the individual. It seeks to ensure where possible that age, gender and health status do not influence the cost of an insura…

Hear, hear.

The Government broke the law.

It is for non-HSE staff.