Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

Deputy Power should remain quiet. The national health strategy was to deliver 3,000 beds, a wish list of services for the elderly, 600 primary care centres and a national cancer strategy by the end of 2002. Four years later, after tens of billions of euro, we do not have the world class health system promised by the Government.

This week, many are left wondering where all the money has gone when we read the truly damning letter in the Irish Examiner to the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children from the southern region's only consultant medical oncologist, Dr. O'Reilly, who is now serving 500,000 people. In his letter he states he could not get hospital care for dying cancer patients because of a lack of beds. As a result of the failure to roll out breast cancer screening services, women in the southern region need more extensive surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy and hormonal therapy.

Dr. O'Reilly describes how a cancer patient was left at home in pain as the only alternative was to admit her on a trolley in the accident and emergency unit. Previous cancer patients were put in wards surrounded by intoxicated people. The southern region has fewer consultants, fewer junior doctors and fewer liaison nurse supporters than any other region. In the ninth year of the Government, why in the name of heavens is a skilled and senior medical professional reduced to a desperate plea for action on behalf of his patients? Is this not a damning indictment of the Government? Does it not expose the inability to plan properly, spend wisely and invest well? Does it not expose the hypocrisy of the words of the Government for the past nine years in respect of national cancer strategy and world class health services? Does it not demonstrate how the Government has wasted the people's money, and as a consequence why, in some circumstances, people have died?

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