Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I find this baffling. We are putting one-off expenditure of €432 million in there so that we have a bit of extra time. That does not even come close. By the way, that plus ELS is still half of what the Department and the HSE were looking for to stand still. Let us make that point first. The second argument is that we need this because the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, needs more time to speak to his colleague in government to figure out what is going on. That is despite the fact that there is monthly monitoring by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform of health expenditure, quarterly reports into the Department and other mechanisms for doing this. This did not drop from the sky today.

The issue is as follows. I am shocked that the Minister and the Secretary General are not discussing serious warnings from the head of the HSE about the risk to public safety from decisions that the Department is about to carry out. I am shocked that is the case. I am shocked that there seems to be no basis for the differing figures from the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform on this. In the middle of all of that are people. Mr. Moloney says there is no underfunding of healthcare, and we can splice and dice this as many ways as we want, but when I am talking to a constituent and they cannot get a bed or see a consultant, or when I am talking to the management in my services in Letterkenny University Hospital today, tomorrow and all the rest and ask about the person we have been trying to recruit for the last six months they will tell me they had to rescind the offer. Why? It is because of what we are discussing. The need is there and this is what Robert Watt and Bernard Gloster have said. What is driving this is need and inflation. We can point out what is being provided but if you do that then you have to close the doors, turn off the tap and say we can do no more. Patients will suffer and people will die if timely and appropriate healthcare are not provided in a reasonable time. I will leave it at that.