Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

He would not accept our words because they are in charge.

The Minister, Deputy Reilly, promised many people that when he was in the Minister's office we would not get any more letters from the HSE saying, "Sorry, this is not a matter for the Minister, it is for the HSE", but slowly the letters are arriving. Nothing has changed. I am appalled at the Minister, Deputy Reilly, because he was a medical practitioner and an eminent consultant and he should have known better than to promise that there would be no more people on trolleys and that everything would be proper. The Minister will have deaths on her conscience, and she knows that better than me, and what she is doing in Clonmel and throughout the country is outrageous.

We have seen this happen over the years from Monaghan to Sligo to Drogheda, and it is happening now in the mid-west. Nenagh hospital lost its services. The Minister told the psychiatric patients in Clonmel that they can go to Limerick and now they find they will have to go to Ennis. I heard one of the Minister of State's colleagues say here recently that there were no services in Ennis for themselves let alone to allow them take new people in from Tipperary. It is an outrageous scam and a scandal. The Minister sold a pup to the public.

I am appalled by the change of attitude on the part of the Minister of State. I am appalled because we blocked these doors one night to try to get a meeting with her. She begrudgingly had a meeting with us afterwards but she just trotted out the line of the officials, which was outrageous. The way they treated the staff in Clonmel is outrageous. They did not have any consultation or show respect or appreciation of staff. They told a senior eminent psychologist in my presence and that of my former colleague and the then Minister of State, Deputy John Moloney, that the place was a zoo. How dare they do that? Some of them were only a fine day in Clonmel. They came from a failed system in England and walked into jobs here. The same applies to most of the people in the Health Information and Quality Authority. We employ them and send them around the country to do the dirty work for senior Department officials. I am appalled by them because they have no respect for the staff or the people.

I am appalled also by the Minister, Deputy Reilly, but especially by the Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, because of the tirades we had to listen to in committee when she was a Deputy. She attacked the Ministers and was a champion of all the people who were depressed and downtrodden but the poacher has become the gamekeeper. She is presiding over the outrageous behaviour by HSE officials who are not fit to be employed and who are betraying democracy in this country, and they are doing so on fat salaries. They will not listen to elected representatives or anybody else.

The Minister of State, Deputy Lynch, should hang her head in shame and bring us on that tour to St. Senan's and to the west as she promised but like all the promises before the election and the snow that disappeared off the ditch last January, she thinks that we are fools and that we will go away, but, like Roscommon, those of us in Clonmel will not go away. The fight is not over. We will continue. The Minister of State can go back and pinch the patients, or pinch Deputy Healy and myself, but she will not make fools of us.

See this speech in context