Yesterday in the Dáil the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, stated:

We need additional resources for the fair deal scheme, home care packages and home help provision.

As the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, and Mr. Tony O'Brien have outlined, there are three options for achieving these objectives. We could opt to reprioritise spending within the health Vote or we could bring forward a spending plan later in the year. The third option, pretending the problem will somehow go away in the summer, is not really an option. That is a total nonsense and fewer and fewer people believe it.

Is there legislation promised?

He also stated:

When it comes to a decision on the three options, it is not one I can make on my own; it must be done in conjunction with the Cabinet committee on health and the Economic Management Council. All members of the Cabinet committee and the EMC are fully apprised of the situation and have been since November.

My first question to the Tánaiste is whether the Minister for Health is being isolated by the EMC. That is something she will appreciate because prior to her elevation to the position of Tánaiste she felt, as Minister for Social Protection, that she was on the periphery of decisions that were made. In light of her own experience I hope she will have some reassuring words for the Minister for Health and assist him with his dilemma.

Will there be a Revised Estimate to assist the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, in dealing with the very difficult situation in which elderly patients find themselves in our acute hospitals?

As the Deputy knows, the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, got a historic level of additional resources in the budget, and we are only a couple of months into the financial year.

It will get worse though.

He got very significant additional resources for last year and very significant additional resources for this year. The Minister has welcomed that. He also had additional resources, as the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, has had, of €25 million in regard to the fair deal scheme.

Her plan was to charge the patients.

I am sure the Minister for Health and the HSE will sit down with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to go through the options for departmental efficiencies, particularly on the significant cost of drugs, so as to provide the best possible delivery of services to the people the Deputy talked about.