Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Yesterday, the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children announced she had made a discovery and the nation quite frankly is aghast, not at what she has discovered but that it has taken her so long to recognise the basis of this discovery, that we have a serious crisis in our accident and emergency units throughout the hospital network. It is absolutely incredible that despite the repeated pointing out of this fact in this Chamber by Opposition voice after Opposition voice, it has taken this time for this Minister to recognise the crisis and the emergency that exists. This is not something that has only happened in the past week. This has been building not only since 2002 but going back to when the Government first took office in 1997. The situation today is much worse.

Does the Taoiseach recall that in his health strategy in 2001 he stated that an additional 3,000 beds would be needed in the public health system, yet we see the continuation of public money being spent in the provision of private health care? We see the absolutely incredible situation where the Taoiseach's manifesto in the last general election in 2002 declared he would work towards the end of the two-tier system, yet he is reinforcing it. Does he not think it is obscene to see the numbers of consultant doctors competing for the €1 million suites in the new private hospital development that the Tánaiste heralded and introduced in Dublin? Those investments and that opportunity have been funded by this Government out of public moneys. The reality is that we want to see our public moneys invested in public health provision and not in tax breaks for private health care providers who are there to make profit. Instead of that money being wasted as it is, and the further waste in terms of the failed effort on the part of the HSE to bring in various computer systems, it could have provided 1,000 of those 3,000 acute hospital beds.

Last week I raised what I described as the farce of the recent reference by the Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Children that accident and emergency units were to be renamed and reconfigured to include admission lounges yet we heard on national radio this morning where an accident and emergency consultant in St. James's Hospital described the reality more as departure lounges because in that hospital alone they are losing at least one patient per month because of the inadequate provision for people presenting at that accident and emergency unit. Will the Taoiseach recognise that the only way to address this national emergency is for the Government to ensure all public moneys are invested in the public health system and that we move with alacrity to ensure the provision of the 3,000 additional acute hospital beds to which the Government committed in its health strategy in 2001?

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