Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to come back to access. The Chairman suggested that he felt no sense of urgency from the Minister. I am not saying the Minister does not care. We all care. However, I do not get a sense of urgency from the healthcare system or the political leadership, which is the Minister. I reiterate that I have read back through all the opening statements and there is no mention of the crisis in access. We have the worst access that we have ever had in Ireland. We have the worst access for patients through the public system of anywhere in Europe. The Minister said he is deadly serious about wanting to sit down with consultant representative bodies, but then he cites what I think are unintentionally spurious reasons for meeting the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, first and not the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, IHCA. The IHCA is fully compliant with industrial relations criteria to represent consultants, as of course is the IMO. We have seen no movement on pay inequality in recent years, even though we know we have the lowest level of hospital consultants anywhere in Europe. We know this is a major contributor to the inhuman waiting lists, yet there has been no movement in what is a pretty small number to reverse that. The Minister is still going ahead with building private facilities into the national children's hospital and the national maternity hospital in spite of the de Buitléir report, while stating that he supports that report.

I am not going to dwell on the attacks on Fianna Fáil, but just to correct the record, because I know the Minister is keen on the record being straight, he seems to be suggesting that the last Fianna Fáil Government took a load of beds out of the system, and for some bizarre reason he is increasingly referencing Deputy Micheál Martin, presumably as some pre-election warm-up. Between 2000 and 2004, Deputy Martin was Minister for Health and he added more than 1,000 beds. In respect of the 14 years of the previous Fianna Fáil Government, the number of beds when it left Government was 1,000 more than when it came in.

The reality is that while I accept that the Minister cares, as we all care, the question is around prioritisation. I do not see it and I do not feel the urgency. The total health expenditure voted through this House over the past three years under Deputy Harris as Minister is about an additional €3.5 billion, and in spite of that, access to public healthcare has collapsed. If this is indeed such a priority, how has access collapsed given such a massive increase in funding for healthcare?