Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

These are the 3,000 beds that the Government parties ripped out ruthlessly in the 1980s when they aimed at the old, the sick and the handicapped. If the Government rips out thousands of beds, naturally it will have an acute difficulty. If in the meantime the population increases by three quarters of a million people it will have a full-blown crisis. That is as simple as A,B,C.

The Government deliberately obfuscates the problem because instead of providing those beds in a straightforward way, by extending the capacity of existing hospitals which have plenty of land for such development, and maybe building some new hospitals where they are required, it delays. It then gives its political friends, beef barons, speculators and developers, lots of tax breaks and public land to make a killing on people's health. In the meantime public patients are suffering grievously because of this agenda.

When will the full complement of the 3,000 beds be provided? Does the Taoiseach have an accurate figure for the extra beds needed by virtue of the increase in population by three-quarters of a million people? When will they be provided? Then we will have no more of this.

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