Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. I agree with what the previous speakers said. This is the third year in a row where we have an unsustainable budget and cuts of €619 million plus 2,500 staff, which will create further difficulties, particularly for patients but also for staff and for the provision of necessary services for patients.
I want to raise again the question of whether there is any information from the HSE on agency costs. I have raised this issue at many meetings. I have got assurances from the HSE and from the Minister that we would get these figures but I have not got them yet. The committee secretariat has been trying to get the figure without success. I ask for an assurance from the Minister that these figures will be made available within the next day or two. They are very important figures because we know that the cost of agency non-consultant hospital doctors is huge. I have been told that it can cost anything up to three times the cost of a directly employed non-consultant hospital doctor. We would also like to know the cost of agency nursing. The overall figure of approximately €60 million for non-consultant hospital doctors was given at one meeting. As Senator Burke said, on the basis of the number of staff involved, that appears to be a huge figure. Hopefully, the Minister might have those figures this afternoon and, if he does not, I ask that they be given to us.
When will we have sight of the McGrath report? What steps are being taken to ensure that non-consultant hospital doctors are available to staff hospitals throughout the country? There is a serious problem in this respect.
On the query raised by Deputy Kelleher on the employment and appointment of consultant medical staff, at a recent meeting we were told that there was no real problem here. I would like some clarification on that. There now appears to be a real problem if media reports are anything to go by. At a very recent meeting, we were told that there was no real problem at all.
I ask the Minister to reconsider the position regarding medical cards. The Minister said in his statement: "Suffice it to say that my Department will be working closely with the HSE and with the assistance and support of the Departments of An Taoiseach and Public Expenditure and Reform to ensure that savings from these measures are maximised." This relates to medical probity. What that means is that very ill people who have held cards for years are being refused cards - their cards are being withdrawn. I hear of this happening on a daily basis and other colleagues, both on the Government and Opposition benches, have told me they find the same is happening.
As I came into this meeting earlier, I got notification that a card that had been withdrawn from a young chap, who is wheelchair-bound, with recurrent epileptic seizures, hyrdocephalus, cerebral palsy, spastic diplegia, who has a shunt in situand suffers from perennial rhinitis. An appeal was submitted against a refusal to issue him a medical card and the decision to refuse it to that young person with those various medical conditions was upheld. That is what medical card probity means in practice. I meet people with such cases on a regular basis, as do other colleagues. I ask the Minister to reconsider this issue and to pull back from the current position. It is a very serious situation for families and for individuals with serious medical conditions who are losing their medical cards.
The Minister has targets set for addressing delays in outpatient appointments but there are serious problems regarding the length of time people have to wait for outpatient appointments, particularly for orthopaedic appointments. This is a problem throughout the country. It is a problem in my area, both on the Waterford side and on the Limerick-Cork side. It is a national issue. Delays in orthopaedic appointments are a particular problem and I ask the Minister to clarify the position on this.