Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak to the motion. Reading through the text, I was struck by the line "the lack of sufficient resources will not be in the best interests of patient care". One could also propose that all Deputies support world peace as both statements are obvious and lack depth. I mean no offence to the author of the motion, Deputy Billy Kelleher, but those were my first thoughts on reading the motion.

This is a timely opportunity to examine the reason for the current lack of resources. Winds can change very fast. The Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, referred to negative messaging. This week, an RTE programme featured a claim that hospital consultants need to be paid more because there is a shortage of consultants in the system. While this is a sensible argument, it was not long ago that people were screaming that consultants were being paid too much. There is a danger that we will get carried away and forget that we are still in a difficult position. We need to be a little more realistic and mature in this debate. We are in this position because we have only recently exited a bailout programme and the country is broke. People have endured horrendous challenges and I do not need to remind the author of the motion of the reasons we ended up in circumstances where every budget and Department had to be squeezed to the nth degree to ensure the State could survive with some semblance of financial security. In that respect, we are not out of the woods yet.

Expenditure on health has been reduced by €3 billion per annum and the health service is operating with 10,000 fewer staff than when the Government took office. People on hospital trolleys were a common sight in the heyday of the so-called Celtic tiger. The solution offered by the Government at that time was to throw more money at the health service. This was false revenue that must now be repaid, however, because it was generated by a building boom. The then Government's solution to all problems was to throw more money at them. In the case of the health sector, that policy achieved nothing. To cite only one example, the number of people on trolleys was much higher during the boom than it is now, despite the billions of additional funding available to the health service at the time.

When the Government took office in 2011 it decided to face the challenge by doing more with less. That is real politics. Will Deputy Kelleher or the party he represents make some constructive proposals on sources of additional funding for the Department of Health? Should they include the Department of Social Protection or the a reduction in the number of gardaí by the Department of Justice and Equality? When the Deputy's party makes some grown up choices we will be able to have a substantial debate on the issue.

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