I met them quite recently in other contexts.

I thank the Acting Chairperson and Senators for inviting me to speak about the women's health action plan and the national maternity hospital, NMH. The new NMH has, of course, been recently debated extensively and the concerns raised regarding ownership, governance and influence have been addressed in the legal framework that has been published. In approving the legal framework, the Government was satisfied it had achieved the State's objectives to ensure all legally permissible services will be available, with no …

I thank colleagues for their time and input. Rather than giving a pre-written speech I might respond to the Senators who are present on the issues they have raised. I might engage with Senator Warfield further on the transgender issue. If there are barriers to access that should not be there, then we need to know about them and to identify them. I am open to discussing that with the Senator. He and I could meet and the Senator could write a note on the issue. If progress can be made, let us make it. We are on track…

It is not remotely disingenuous.

It was clearly agreed that we would set up a special committee which would take 12 weeks and report back with proposed amendments. We have stopped the Bill to wait for and accommodate that process. That has been agreed. The special committee has been set up and is meeting. We have paused the Bill and are waiting to hear back from the committee after 12 weeks. That is the process that has been agreed. Let us see where that takes us. Both domestic and international surrogacy need to be addressed. It is just a questio…

It is too long and completely unacceptable. I have personally, as no doubt the Deputy has, seen the distress in overcrowded emergency departments - distress to patients, their families and our healthcare professionals across the country. I have visited some of the busiest sites including Limerick and Galway. Later today I will be in the Mercy Hospital in Cork and tomorrow I will be in Cork University Hospital, CUH. I will talk to senior management and clinicians about what is going on and what needs to change. We i…

I fully agree that the operation in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda is fantastic. I think it has five separate pathways when patients come in, including the use of advanced nurse practitioners who are doing a phenomenal job in being able to see, treat and discharge about 70% to 75% of the patients coming into that hospital. The challenge the Deputy posed is exactly the challenge I posed the HSE. What are we doing about it? We now have a group that is looking at every emergency department throughout the cou…

I agree with all of that. In Bray on Friday, I met the new chronic disease management team, the new older persons team and the new community healthcare network, including a pilot on mental health led by an advanced nurse practitioner in mental health. The level of prevention that is going on, including emergency presentation, is very impressive and fully in line with the Sláintecare vision, involving a massive investment in community-based care. We are beginning to see a reduction in referrals in the areas where th…

I thank the Deputy for raising the matter. I am very sympathetic to the patients and their families over what has happened. I met the patient groups involved in late 2020 and supported their call for a review into sodium valproate. I committed to making it happen. Since then, senior officials in my Department have been engaging closely with the patient groups and other stakeholders over the past year to finalise the terms of reference to get this review under way. Critically, the review will be designed around givi…

The inquiry will be established as soon as we get the terms of reference finalised. It is important that the terms of reference, first and foremost, make sense for the patients, families and groups. We must also ensure all the stakeholders can work with those terms of reference. We are reviewing the terms of reference at the moment. I cannot give an exact date but I will revert to the Deputy with an update when I have it. After a diagnosis, the geneticist makes a recommendation on the health services that are neede…

I thank the Deputy. It is very serious if that is the case. It is not the advice I have from the Department or the HSE. The advice I have is that the services and equipment are being provided. There is a mechanism whereby if a CHO does not have a budget specifically for this group of patients, it can put a business case together centrally. The HSE has not received any business cases and the advice I have is that the CHOs are providing support. What the Deputy is saying is serious. I will look into it today.

Let us take a look. I will revert to the Deputy with a note.

The Government, as provided for in the programme for Government, is committed to introducing the new public-only consultant contract. I want to do so in a timely manner. A new consultant contract, as I know the Deputy will agree, is one of the important steps towards universal, single-tier healthcare, with public hospitals exclusively used for the treatment of public patients. That is the cornerstone of the contract from the State's perspective. Last July, terms of reference were agreed with the representative bodi…

As it happens, I met Dr. Humphries and her associate on Monday or Tuesday. As the Deputy is aware, they have done five years' work on this. They have focused their work specifically on Australia but I fully agree that the matters are intrinsically linked. A root-and-branch reform of the non-consultant hospital doctor, NCHD, pathway is needed. The current pathway for NCHDs is not acceptable and we should not be surprised that too many of them elect to go to Australia, New Zealand or Canada. There is a whole piece of…

I agree with everything the Deputy said other than her point about a sense of urgency. If I am not conveying a sense of urgency here, I can assure her that the groups involved, including the Department, are very aware that there is a sense of urgency. We are moving on this as a priority and we are doing two things at the same time. We are looking at the NCHD contract, at the six to ten years that they are with us but separately to that, we are moving on the contract. Obviously they are linked but they are separate …

A number of Deputies have tabled questions on-----

Is it dealt with separately?

Thank you. I thank Deputy Duncan Smith for raising this issue. We had a good debate on this yesterday. I want to acknowledge the incredibly valuable role that medical scientists play in our healthcare system but on top of that, the fact that they, along with their healthcare colleagues across the system, have put in even longer hours and tougher shifts during the pandemic. I have met a lot of them and am fully aware of the personal and professional cost of this. It has meant very long hours working in even more str…

That makes an awful lot of sense, not just for medical scientists but right across the board. Probably the single biggest challenge we have in terms of the ongoing modernisation of the public health service is recruitment. If we are going to have a challenge, it is the right one to have. The funding has been allocated and the posts have been sanctioned but we are trying to recruit a huge number of people in a very short period of time. In community care, for example, we have sanctioned 3,500 health and social care …

Yes, hopefully through the WRC and then, if necessary, through the Labour Court, we can find a resolution to this that works for everybody. Deputy Naughten made a very salient point in yesterday's debate when he said that we need to respect, grow and develop this workforce because as science and technology become more advanced and linked into care through genetics and so forth, and as we move towards personalised medicine which is opening up incredible opportunities in terms of healthcare in the future, medical sci…