Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

The comprehensive Labour Party motion deals with the record of the current Minister over the past 12 months. The amendment to the motion tabled by the Government is a direct contradiction of everything the motion proposes. That contradiction is about deluding itself because no member of the public believes we have a first world health service. No one believes it because anyone who has had contact with the health service knows that it falls down in every aspect.

No one in Ireland is unaware that the previous Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Martin, came from Cork. Therefore, it would appear, as usually happens in a Fianna Fáil Government, that Ministers look after their own constituencies. However, that was not the case with the bold Micheál. Micheál did not look after anyone's constituency. He did not look after his own, Cork North-Central, Dublin Central, Dublin South-Central, Donegal, Monaghan and so on. As a result, a new accident and emergency department was built as a skin on the original Cork University Hospital. This meant the accident and emergency department, which was used up to recently, was now in pitch darkness because all the windows had been blocked off by the new accident and emergency department, which was not open for three years. Not only did it not have the new facility, but it made the old facility worse. One might find that difficult to imagine, but it is a fact.

The Tánaiste, Deputy Harney, then took over as Minister for Health and Children. She did so on the basis that she could do no wrong. After all, she was the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment for seven years, but then again, if one put a five-year-old, with one year of pre-school, into that Department in the past seven years, he or she could have run it because it was virtually running itself, as long as one did nothing to damage it. As she was in charge of that Department, she believed she could tackle the Department of Health and Children, and do so quite well. I imagine for the first year she has been in that office, she has gone into a type of semi-coma. She met so many problems that she has simply thrown her hands in the air and asked herself what is she doing. Perhaps she believes the Minister for Finance's proclamation when he left the Department Health and Children that it was like Angola and she is desperately trying to find an exit strategy.

Let me tell Members about the hospitals in Cork. In Cork University Hospital's outpatient department, people still queue along a corridor for hours. As someone who did so in the past few months, let me recount what the conditions are like. One must queue for the dressing clinic along a corridor where trolleys pass, equipment is moved and people who are seriously ill are brought for X-ray. It is like something one would see in one of the advertisements for Trócaire or GOAL. Nurses desperately try to deal with people as quickly as possible because they are aware of the queue. Nurses are constantly being hailed from other departments to help in the dressing area. It is no wonder infections are being contracted by patients because staff are dealing with people in such volumes and under such poor conditions that it is virtually impossible to give anyone the attention they require, yet they try desperately to do so.

Let me tell Members about the other hospital in Cork, the South Infirmary-Victoria. It is the ready made set for a Dickens novel. There are wards in the hospital that still contain 30 and 40 beds. It is open plan — I suppose that is the modern term. These wards are filled with people who should be somewhere else, but there is nowhere else. This is the Government that manages our wealth and tells us we have the best economy in Europe, which we have, but anyone going into any of these two hospitals would be forgiven for thinking we cannot do anything about it because we are too poor. We are not poor, we are wealthy. It is just that the Government chooses not to spend the money on the people who created the wealth.

Let me tell Members about the people who should be somewhere else. These people should be at home, but because the former Southern Health Board, the HSE or whatever the Minister wants to call it, has reduced the home help hours by 20% in the Cork city and county area, they cannot go home because there is no one to look after them. As we are all living longer, we will need these facilities and specialties, but they are the services on which the Government has chosen to cut back.

On the disabled person's grant, people at home or in hospitals where they should not be, continue to fill out forms, send them in and wait for occupational therapists and companies to call to the door, and wait for approval by the local authority. Surely in a modern society, when visiting the reception in any hospital to give details about going into hospital, it should be easy enough to figure out that when the patient leaves hospital, he or she will need home help and adjustments to his or her home. However, it appears to be beyond the Government to do anything in a reasonable or rational way. The only thing it appears to be capable of doing is wasting taxpayers' money. There is waste and want. No one is saying that running a country is the same as running a home because it is not the case. However, I guarantee the Minister of State that if people ran their homes in the same way the Government is running the country, the marriage breakdown rate would be much higher because no one would put up with it. The Government is a disgrace and it should hang its head in shame.

There is one other figure in regard to the Cork area, which is important and which should be dealt with. This relates to the orthodontic service, to which Members on this side have been referring for years. The number of children waiting for treatment in Cork city and county is 2,549. These are the children of taxpayers and those who created the wealth the Government is squandering, and even at that level it cannot get things right. When we talk about health, we are really talking about quality of life for the people who created the wealth. Every country can provide proper health services, but it is not the case in this country because the Government is incapable of doing so.

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