Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I am pleased to have an opportunity to make a brief contribution on the Health Bill and on the issues surrounding the provision of the health service. The Minister, Deputy Harney, must be commended for taking on the portfolio of Minister for Health and Children. Since the Government took up office in mid-1997, when spectacular promises were made and equally spectacularly broken, the Government has taken a very cynical and brutal approach to the health service. In 2002, the Fianna Fáil Party promised 200,000 additional medical cards. Since then, not only did it refuse to countenance the provision of additional medical cards, it made a brutal and cynical decision to cut the number of medical cards by more than 100,000. This spectacular breach of faith has been the hallmark of the Government's approach to health spending.

There has been ongoing chaos in our accident and emergency departments. The Government has refused to tackle the vice grip of vested interest, in particular that represented by consultants. Throughout our lives we have endured nonsense, whereby accident and emergency departments did not have a consultant or senior medical director in situ during late evening and early morning hours. We should have modern treatment centres rather than the chaotic, disgraceful and shameful situation which exists in hospitals, as is the case at those near my constituency on the northside of Dublin. It is astonishing that the leading clinical directors of health care in the State were not forced to deliver the type of on-demand services required by any civilised society. Fianna Fáil, the Progressive Democrats and Fine Gael have never been prepared to take on vested interests in the health service. As my great predecessors, Dr. Noel C. Browne and Mr. Barry Desmond, discovered——

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