Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

I thank my Labour Party colleagues for their thoughtful contributions to this debate. I also thank Fine Gael Deputies and Deputies from the Technical Group. However, I would most of all like to thank the Fianna Fáil backbenchers for their contributions. Their united silence was very telling. They did not speak about the privatisation agenda and it is clear they are more in touch with the people than the Minister and the Minister of State, who defended the crazy scheme of handing over scarce resources at taxpayers' expense to private investors. Deputy Moloney was a loyal last man standing in defending the Minister, but he is the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Health and Children.

This is an act of desperation. The Government is facing into a general election and its members know that people will ask them on the doorsteps what happened to all of the promises. What happened to the commitment to end the waiting lists? What happened to the 200,000 medical cards? The accident and emergency crisis still lumbers on. The HSE produced figures today which show that 200 people are on trolleys, 62 of them waiting for over 24 hours, with 24 of them waiting even longer. That is unacceptable, but that is the record. The amendment put forward by the Government shows just how threadbare its standing is on the issue. It talks about HIQA and about regulating nursing homes. None of these things has been done, even though time and again we have asked the Government to release the legislation so that it can be debated in this House and to produce the regulatory framework that is urgently required to ensure that people are protected.

I spoke today to the mother of Michelle Tallon, a mentally handicapped young woman who lost her life in a hospital. The decision at the inquest was that death was due to medical misadventure. This is one patient's tragedy. This woman does not know where to turn. There is no ombudsman or proper regulatory framework for public hospitals or public nursing home beds. None of the commitment made by the Taoiseach in the aftermath of Leas Cross has been delivered. Instead there is a proposal to which the Minister is committed, to privatise what she can within the health service.

It is not good for the health service and it is not good for the majority of patients to have this kind of demarcation and separation and the institutionalisation of a two-tier system. It is a squandering of an opportunity and the Minister of State knows it. He knows that we deserve better. Those of us who are sick, ailing and elderly deserve much better from a Government that has not delivered on its promises and is setting out to destroy the best in our health service. Shame on you.

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