I welcome the students in the Gallery. It is always great to see young people in this House. I assure them that we talk about them here.

I would like to respond to what Senator Freeman has said about a child who is waiting for services. It is an appalling vista. The Taoiseach has spent the past few weeks talking about making tax cuts over a period of five years. Every programme that the Government announces now is for another five years. We do not need to remind ourselves that Fine Gael has been in government for seven years. I am not here to criticise Fine Gael because it does many good things and I support many of its initiatives. I can honestly say that the treatment of children in this State is an absolute disgrace. Senators Freeman and Ó Ríordáin and other Members have spoken about the appalling and disgraceful experiences of children. It is an indictment of politics, and of the system across the board, that our children are being told they cannot have access to facilities and proper and decent healthcare because of funding. I spoke in this House recently about the closure of the children's unit in the National Rehabilitation Hospital in Dún Laoghaire. We constantly hear excuses from the Minister when he says that these are budgetary matters. He blames the HSE and everybody else. The Minister for Health and the Government are ultimately responsible for the delivery of proper and appropriate healthcare services for our people. We can no longer allow the Government of the day to come in here and make excuses. It has to be held to account. All of us must hold them to account. It is an absolute disgrace. The Minister, Deputy Harris, needs to be brought back in here to focus specifically on all forms of child healthcare, including child mental health issues. He needs to be grilled and held to account because it is an absolute scandal. There will be an election months from now.

What?

People will be going out and talking about the wonderful service we have. I am sick of hearing lectures about a new republic of opportunity where we care for everyone equally. I will leave it at that. I ask the Acting Leader to arrange for the Minister to come in.

I would also like him to tell us when the Government intends to introduce legislation to underpin the Land Development Agency. Despite all the public relations, no specific money has been set aside for the agency.

I would like to respond to the previous speaker by mentioning a big change in healthcare that has occurred in the past two years. There have been increases in the health budget and in the number of people employed in the health service. The cutbacks we had to endure for the first four years after we took office in 2011 are on longer happening. I will mention some figures. The number of people working in the health service has increased by 13,000 since 2014. Those people are employed across the board. There are questions to be asked about proportionality in respect of the new people who have been taken on. I have taken this up with the Minister for Health and the HSE. We need to make sure we continue to deliver services.

When we look at healthcare in this country, it is interesting to note that life expectancy is continuing to increase. Over the past 15 or 16 years, it has increased by 2.5 years for both men and women. Such issues need to be taken into account. The big challenge we face is to deliver a healthcare system that serves people in all age groups who are young, middle aged or old. I agree with my colleague that there are deficiencies in the system. We need to work to resolve those problems.

I will mention one area that I want to work on. It was interesting to learn at yesterday's meeting of the Joint Committee on Health, at which various people discussed the evaluation of orphan drugs, that there are between 6,000 and 8,000 different rare diseases. The problem we have in Ireland is that the number of people with a particular rare disease can be quite small. I recently dealt with a case in which ten people in this country would benefit from a new drug that is being brought onto the market by a pharmaceutical company. Our process for dealing with access to medicines, particularly new medicines for the treatment of lung cancer and other forms of cancer, is slow. We need to look towards having a national medicines policy, which is something we are missing. Such a policy is needed to expedite access to medicines in a timely manner. We have fallen behind a number of countries in respect of the time involved in getting access to new medicines. We are behind 13 other western European countries in that regard. We need to work on that. It might be helpful to have a debate on the cost of drugs and pharmaceuticals in this country compared with other countries. We need to consider how we can make the process more efficient and how we can get value for money as we ensure treatment is provided to those who require assistance.