Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputy Neville.

The Minister of State should be appointed Taoiseach because other areas of responsibility are coming to a full stop. Nothing is happening in the health area. Fianna Fáil is dragging the country back to where it was when Charlie Haughey was Taoiseach and Alan Dukes had to bail them out through the Tallaght strategy. What respect could one have for a Government that generates headlines such as "Overheated Economy Fear"? The article states: "The Central Bank warns that rising house prices allied with tax cuts and the stock market boom are beginning to overheat the economy". The same headlines, while pointing out the Minister for Finance's budget put an additional €800 million in people's pockets through tax cuts, highlight that spiralling prices for new houses are making builders rich and happy. Is that the type of Government people, other than builders, want for this country? I would welcome it if Fianna Fáil Deputies explained these headlines to people like me on this side of the House.

Events in the health service are important. Taxpayers will need every euro they have to get the health services they need. Due to the Government's failure to reform services, we continue to spend significant amounts on them, but considerable gaps in their delivery remain. Failure to deliver on the health or primary care strategies means that the only alternative to paying €65 to an accident and emergency department or between €40 and €60 to a local general practitioner is to pay between €85 and €260 to a private clinic. That is only the beginning of people's problems. Instead of getting a home help service, one is asked to pay between 13.5% and 21% in VAT on home care packages.

Compared to the preceding situation, Fianna Fáil has spent more than €10 billion extra on health every year since entering power, but it aims to force old people to sell their homes if they need private nursing home care. This contradicts some of the headlines about this great social, caring Government. Last year's surplus will go to the same elderly patients to whom the Minister could not repay money stolen from them via illegal nursing homes charges. Today, representatives of the Health Service Executive told the Joint Committee on Health and Children that there was a deficit in legislation protecting elderly patients, but it also admitted that no resources are available.

County Wexford is like any other part of the country in that there are not enough public health nurses, occupational therapists, community physiotherapists or counsellors. Wexford General Hospital, which operates on patients with bowel cancer, an illness the incidence of which is increasing, does not have a specialist nurse to look after patients with colostomy bags. That is the type of disjointed thinking the Government passes off as a reforming health service.

Not only is the Leas Cross report a live issue, and there are a number of similar nursing homes, but the HSE admitted that it does not have enough doctors and nurses to carry out inspections of nursing homes. This is a disgrace for the Government. Its overreliance on the private sector is to the detriment of elderly patients. While the private sector has a role to play in respect of low dependency and intermediate dependency patients, the public sector must be built up to look after high dependency patients. Phase 1 of St. John's Hospital in Enniscorthy, which looks after elderly patients in County Wexford, has taken more than ten years to build, but phases 2 and 3 remain to be completed. This is the slow pace at which the Government delivers service in the health sector and the reason people are losing confidence. A great deal of trust in the HSE has been lost.

The Government is in for a rude awakening because many people do not believe the headlines they read about it or that it is capable of protecting the economy. The Minister of State might give the impression that he is capable of taking over for the Taoiseach because he is doing his job so well, but there are many duds above him in the Cabinet. Some €160 million was thrown away on a computer system with an uncertain future; the Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, is storing half that amount in perpetuity to see if he can get electronic voting machines working; and the Tánaiste is paying twice the market value of land to have a new prison built in his honour, epitomising the Ceausescu-like complex of the boss of the Progressive Democrats. This is the type of governance being delivered.

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