Today, we learned that the equipment in Portlaoise hospital is 15 years old. A leading radiologist said on radio this morning that the radiology equipment in half of this country's hospitals is also 15 years old. How many Ministers are driving around in 15 year-old cars and how many Departments rely on 15 year-old computer equipment? If that is not good enough for the Government, why is it good enough to scan women for breast cancer?

While we were discussing the issue in this House yesterday, Professor John Crown was speaking on the radio, where he described the Government's approach to health services as insane.

He said the Government is presiding over an apartheid system and that its policy appears to be to make public health care as unattractive as possible. He added that the Government has an attitude to public health care which is like its attitude to the dole — it despises it — and that the Government is being hypocritical in closing public facilities on the grounds that they are too small while opening private facilities that are even smaller.

Professor Maurice Nelligan yesterday at a conference said it is immoral and wrong to run down small hospitals without having in place the promised centres of excellence.

Hear, hear.

He went on to say that the plan to build private hospitals has more to do with suiting the construction industry than suiting the needs of the patient. He said the Minister and the HSE are in cloud cuckoo land if they believe that patients are not suffering as a result of the Government's health policies. He also said the Minister for Health and Children would have resigned or been sacked from her position if she was in any other country.

In this morning's Irish Examiner, Professor Ray Kinsella argues that responsibility rests squarely with the Government and that the policies now being pursued, whatever about the Ministers who are pursuing them, were rejected by the electorate in June. Professor Niall Higgins, who drew up the cancer strategy, has described what happened in the hospital in Portlaoise as “a systems failure”, something the Taoiseach said yesterday it was not and which he repeated again here this morning.

These people are respected experts in the field of medicine and health economics. They are not Opposition politicians nor leaders of political parties. They do not have a political axe to grind.

Hold on one second, these are people who cure people. These are people who do their job responsibly and if this Government was doing as good a job in managing and running the health service as these people are in curing their patients, we would not have the problems in the health service that we have today.

Hear, hear.

The Deputy is very deferential to the professions.

They say that what is happening in the health service is the Taoiseach's responsibility and the Government's responsibility. I have one question for the Taoiseach and ask him not to answer me but to answer them. Does he accept responsibility for what is happening in the health service?

The Deputy has asked more than one question.

Answer the last one.

Answer at least one.

Deputy Gilmore was afforded the courtesy of silence and the Taoiseach should be afforded the same courtesy.

First, I remind Deputy Gilmore that the hospitals in Portlaoise and Cork are both public hospitals, so the issues we are talking about are consultants appointed by the process that exists to do their professional job in public hospitals. These issues did not arise in private hospitals. The Deputy knows my view——

What about Barringtons Hospital?

I said Cork and Portlaoise. I did not mention any others.

Barringtons had the exact same problems.

With regard to equipment, almost every hospital will argue all the time that it should have the most modern equipment. The argument in this case——

And so they should.

I am not disputing that. In fact, we are more advanced in this country than they are across the water and in other countries in moving towards digital equipment.

More people die here.

We have not even got BreastCheck right.

We are more advanced in this country, I am told by the medics, in moving towards digital equipment.

The Taoiseach should answer the questions asked.

The machine in question was 15 years old. The normal period for a mammography machine would be in excess of 11 years and this machine had been tested on an annual basis. I am not saying that better equipment is not needed, but that is not the point. As I said earlier, it was the same mammograms that were examined by two different teams. It was the same mammograms and had nothing to do with the equipment. The fact is that one person reading a mammogram decided one issue and another person decided another issue, so that is not about the equipment. In any case, the consultant will deal with it.

On the political point — it is a political point — as to whether I accept responsibility for the 120,000 people who work every day in the health service, I expect that when this House votes €15 billion to those staff, when we resource our health service probably as strongly as anywhere in the modern world, when we provide the facilities as best we can — we have improved facilities enormously with the increase from €3 billion to €15 billion in a short period of time — and when we increase staff by 30,000, I expect the staff to be doing their best, as everyone else is in society.

Give them the money and wash one's hands.

I am not here to decide whether Maurice Nelligan, when he had that job before he retired many years ago, did his cardiac surgery operations perfectly. Whether he made a mistake or not and somebody died, I am not here to form judgment on that or on any other consultant. I am not here to answer ——

We know that is not what the Taoiseach is here to do.

The Taoiseach is not here to take responsibility either.

I am not here ——

We must have silence for the Taoiseach.

I am not here to answer for the consultants in this country when they are in their operating theatres, doing a perfect job. It does not do this House much good that I am reading out some of the clinical and surgical diagnoses of individual patients. That is not what I should be doing. We provide modern facilities to very well paid people in this country.

What about the 15 year-old machinery?

The vast majority earn far in excess of what I do in terms of salary.

The Taoiseach must be joking.

One of the individuals the Deputy mentioned, to the best of my knowledge, has a huge private practice along with his public practice and the best of luck to him.

The Taoiseach is not taking responsibility. He continues to pass the buck.

If Deputy Gilmore expects me to come in here every single morning and say that the 120,000 people working in the health service — every one of them, whether in an operating theatre or out in the community — have performed to the highest standards, I cannot do that.

What about the Taoiseach himself?

I must say, though, that they are well facilitated by this State and I hope they provide that service——

The equipment was 15 years old.

——and we will continue to do our best, as a Government, to improve that service.

I call on Deputy Gilmore to ask a brief supplementary question. I remind Members that this is Leaders' Questions and it is not open to other Members to interrupt.

That is a scandalous, cowardly reply which does not answer the question. The Taoiseach spent a week, as did the people representing him, including the HSE, casting blame around everywhere else, including the people marching on the streets. Now it is the 120,000 people working in the health service and by side-of-the-mouth implication, it is certain consultants or medical professionals who somehow are not coming up to the mark that are causing the problem. That was not the question I asked. The question I asked was a political question. The buck stops somewhere. Where does it stop? In my view, it stops with the Government. In the view of the respected medical professionals who have spoken over the course of the past 24 hours about what is happening in our health service, the buck ultimately stops with the Taoiseach, his Government and the Minister for Health and Children because they have political responsibility.

The Taoiseach is a great man to come in here and cast aspersions on people who are working in the health service. The one thing that he did not do was own up and stand up for the responsibility that he and his Government has. How much longer does the Taoiseach want to make our health service right? He has now served a probationary period of over ten years and it is in a mess. Over 50% of the people in a survey last week said it is worse now than when the Taoiseach started. It is worse now than when Deputy Harney took office.

It is not worse.

Those people are entitled to a little better from the Taoiseach, for his management, not the individual staff and consultants who are working in the health service, his responsibility and accountability for the way he spends taxpayers' money on the health service because we are not getting value for the money that is being spent on it. It is a mess and it is time that something was done by the Government, other than casting blame, to put it right.

Hear, hear.

As I said yesterday and numerous times in the last week, our work must be to try to help the people who are affected by this and not to get lost in all of the other details. Obviously, for those seven people and some other cases mentioned here over the last few years, the services did not work, for one reason or another. I am not the expert to write the reports. There is a person appointed to do that, who has all the qualifications to write an independent report and I will accept that report, whatever it says. I have been very careful not to cast aspersions on the people involved. I have not even used the briefing notes I have had.

The Taoiseach has briefing notes on everything.

People are entitled to due process in this investigation.

The Taoiseach must be afforded the courtesy of silence.

We will do all we can.

I would say to Deputy Gilmore that before I took this position, there was not even BreastCheck in this country.

There still is not.

Before I took this position, the 2,000 people annually who had breast cancer were not being treated in the excellent way they are being treated today where 75% of them get top quality breast surgery in this country. We have a huge success rate in breast surgery.

What about the other 25%?

We are doing a top class job for those women which did not happen in the past. I am very proud of the fact we are doing that and of the resources we are putting into our hospitals to do that. Some €0.5 billion per year is being allocated to the capital programme to improve the hospitals.

The Taoiseach should come down to Cork.

Time and again we have provided additional resources for more staff. I totally reject Deputy Gilmore's view that the health service in this country is inferior to what it was a decade ago because that implies the 30,000 additional staff, along with the 90,000 already there, are, in some way, not doing their job. They do their job well but I am not in this House to say every member of the HSE working in every part of the Twenty-six Counties is doing an excellent job. How could I, or any politician, do that? If I wrote a letter to any consultant and said anything which affected their medical independence, Deputy Gilmore would be the first person into the House ranting and raving that I was interfering. I am not interfering with how they do their job. I make sure they are paid adequately and, if we could finalise the negotiations, would make sure they would be given a good contract.

While I feel sorry for people and I will work might and main to try to improve the position, I reject the position whereby Deputy Gilmore can come into the House and castigate a health service which we put in place and which is a good one.