Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

That was the promise she made and no amount of interruption will change the plain truth that we all know because we can daily see that accident and emergency services have deteriorated. People are waiting longer during this Minister's period of office. The number of people waiting in accident and emergency departments has grown. I was astonished to hear from Deputy Howlin that one night a couple of weeks ago 41 people were on trolleys and chairs in Wexford Hospital, a small hospital. We have grown used to the fact that in Tallaght Hospital there will be 40 people on trolleys and chairs and in the Mater Hospital patients are suffering horrific conditions but the problem is getting measurably worse.

We were told this new broom of a Minister would clean up the hospitals but the incidence of MRSA has grown significantly worse — five babies in the National Maternity Hospital have been affected by it. We depend most on health services at the beginning and the end of life. What legacy will this Minister leave after her next 18 months in the health services? Will more vulnerable elderly people and neonates be at risk?

That is the pattern and until we have a Government that faces up to the hard facts there will be further deterioration. That, not the individual stories, is what most concerns me. There is a blanket refusal and denial of the facts. When I heard the Taoiseach recently talking gobbledygook about the health service to the people I was chilled because I realised we will get nothing from this Government. We will get no change for the better. The Minister falls back on the Health Service Executive at every turn but it is a bureaucratic nightmare that does not work. It is a very expensive experiment with which not even Niamh Brennan agreed. Let us get real. There is no longer any accountability in the system. The people who have now been in charge for eight years are becoming less accountable, and that goes right through the health service. Ordinary patients do not have access to influence and power, and God knows there was limited access in the time of the health boards. Now there is none.

For the Minister to say that the national treatment purchase fund did not deny access to private hospitals for care is simply not true. Let her say that to my 70-year-old constituent who was told by her specialist at the Blackrock Clinic that the NTPS was not providing the money, so that the operation could not take place. That also happened in the case of an elderly woman from Dunboyne trying to get a heart operation in the Mater Hospital. She was told the same thing.

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