Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

On the same issue, I ask the Tánaiste if she recognises these words:

People will judge our health services by accident and emergency services... I expect real and measurable improvements to take place in the coming months in the delivery of accident and emergency services... Accident and emergency departments form a litmus test for me, the Government and the people...

They were spoken by the Tánaiste on 26 January 2005 when the problem, bad as it was, had not reached anything like the level to which it has since sunk. The Tánaiste will have seen figures in this morning's newspapers which show we have reached the worst position ever. Overcrowding is no longer concentrated in a small number of hospitals but scattered throughout the country's hospitals, with just short of 500 people on trolleys. Patients are being fed at the entrance to toilets and accommodated in a fashion which is not acceptable in a civilised society.

The picture is worse now than when the Tánaiste launched her ten-point plan in November 2004. It is a crisis and while I am not predisposed to doing so, I would be minded to ask for her resignation were she not the pick of the clapped out group of burnt out Ministers who accompany her on the Government side. This matter must be addressed. Setting up another task force and using more verbiage and rhetoric when people are being accommodated without dignity in uncivilised circumstances and staff are unable to provide the kind of care they would like to give is unacceptable. This is the lowest point we have reached in nine terrible years of the Government's management of the health service.

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