John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I said "centralise" and "quangoise", a word that probably is not in the Oxford Dictionary , but that is applicable in this case.

We are seeing a velvet purge of the democratically elected representatives on the health boards, people who have served us well, whose work in that regard did not cost the State a great deal of money despite the propaganda that they were going on junkets here, there and everywhere and being paid huge salaries. Niamh Brennan showed this was not the case. She put forward the idea of retaining those who are democratically elected because they know their communities best and can make representations on their behalf. It is precisely because they can become troublesome to the Government that they are being eliminated. That is the intention behind this legislation, to enable the Government to proceed with the reforms.

We have heard of the Government railroading legislation through these Houses, but in this instance it is railroading through radical and retrograde reforms of our health service. There is considerable evidence to show that those countries which follow a decentralised model are the ones with the most successful health service. I am thinking in particular of the Scandinavian countries. This is the model we ought to be emulating. Instead, I find what is proposed reprehensible in many ways. What we are getting is a health service that currently cannot cope with the demands placed on it. Those of us who have been canvassing at the doorsteps can testify that the issue that is raised most often is the terrible state of the health service.

People from the Fianna Fáil Party who served on health boards going back many years and who served that party well have made representations to me because they are disgusted with the way the party is treating the health service. What the Government is proposing in this legislation will remove the accountability we want in place.

The Minister of State said there will be more accountability in the system and that we will be able to put questions in this regard across the floor of this House. I do not believe that. It will be stated in the House that this is not a matter for the Minister but one for the health executive. Therefore, more accountability will pass from this House. We have been told that the members of the health executive will be answerable to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children. How often will they appear before that committee, how long will those meetings last and how many questions will we be able to ask them? That will be a particularly frustrating and futile exercise.

When the history of our health service will be written and updated, this legislation will be considered as being particularly retrograde. It will lead to further reforms of a kind I find incomprehensible. I am out of the loop in terms of Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil thinking because I believe in a public health service but, clearly, many elements in Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats do not.

The national treatment purchase fund is being used to pay people to go into private hospitals, which is ludicrous. Why do we not invest in our public hospitals? I do not understand the logic behind what the Government is doing. What was previously perhaps an election ploy is now a pillar of the Government's health strategy. Instead of getting the basics right and delivering on the promises the Government made to the electorate to provide more beds, deal with the capacity problem, tackle the waiting lists — we know how the Government has dealt with the figures in that respect in that they are completely wrong — it is going down a route which will make the gap between public and private health care even larger. Those who have a medical card are lucky to have one, but public patients will continue to be treated as second class citizens under the health service.

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