Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I ask that the experts making these predictions at the beginning of the year be in a position to identify the possibility of something arising and specifying exactly what it is likely to cost in the event that it happens. If it does not happen, so much the better. Why can they not project more accurately in a simple way so that at the end of the year they are on budget and had anticipated X, Y and Z, which did not happen but something else did happen so they are balancing our budget to a great extent? I do not want anybody else to waste my time, but I do not want to waste it myself.

Another issue I have referred to is the implementation of Sláintecare and the need to progress as rapidly as possible. We are making progress. I mentioned at the private meeting yesterday that I had family reasons to attend accident and emergency departments more than once in the past two months and what I saw was shocking. I saw accident and emergency departments of major hospitals where many patients were in urgent need of attention and clearly suffering severe pain. In the front row of these departments was a variety of people suffering drug and alcohol overdoses. They dominated the waiting areas to such an extent that other patients, young, old and middle-aged, were intimidated into waiting in the back row.

After the patients had waited for three, four or five hours, the limitation on the number of doctors available became very obvious and patients were told they would have to wait another five or six hours. That cuts no mustard with a patient who is in severe pain and awaiting attention. The patients in severe pain were patiently waiting. While patients will accept that other people are in pain as well and in need of attention, the people who were dominating the demand get attention by virtue of knocking on doors, calling on doctors and so on. There is a place for dealing with all that. A drug treatment centre is the place that needs to be used. A section needs to be set aside to deal with that so that when an ordinary patient comes in off the road for whatever reason gets attention. Even though it may be out of hours or whatever the case may be, these patients need to get attention because this is giving a bad name to the public health service.

The amount of abuse directed at doctors, nurses and attendants is appalling, which I have seen and heard with my own eyes. I saw a fight break out in the accident and emergency unit in one hospital where one prospective patient proposed to wrap a crutch around the head of another patient, both of whom had been admitted in the same fashion. This is a public hospital system. This is not supposed to happen there and this costs taxpayers' money. This is a waste of taxpayers' money to be entertaining people in that condition at the entrance to emergency units of public hospitals. I wish to register my abhorrence at the use of public money in that fashion. Maybe it might make a difference to financial projections if there was a change to the system.