Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion, which has been proposed by my colleagues Deputies Twomey and McManus. I am disappointed by the Taoiseach's remarks earlier in response to questions posed by Deputy Kenny concerning the roll-out of the BreastCheck service and cervical screening. The Taoiseach deliberately tried to throw sand in our faces by attempting to give the House the impression that Deputy Kenny was mixing up the issues of diagnosis and treatment. It is clear that both BreastCheck and cervical screening are designed to see if there are difficulties and to make diagnoses. There is no disagreement on the fact that treatment is the next issue that comes into play. I do not believe these services will be rolled out by the end of this year, which is the new time-frame that has been announced. The slow pace of delivery on these services has been evident to women around the country. It is nothing short of disgraceful. I raised this matter in the House last week. Some 16 nurses in the midlands area have been trained for the past two years to carry out cervical screening. They are ready, willing and able to do it but they must get the HSE's consent to proceed. There is no good excuse as to why this has not happened.

Last year, 1,199 operations were cancelled in the Midlands Regional Hospital in Tullamore. The Minister for Health and Children's colleague in my constituency tried to say that if we have a problem with this we are just against the staff involved, but that is not the case. That this number of operations was cancelled in one year is symptomatic of the serious problems facing the entire health service. The hospital services only four counties so that indicates a huge number of cancelled operations for that region. It proves that we need urgent investment in step-down facilities and the establishment of urgent care centres to free up extra beds.

Hospitals should operate on a full-time basis. At weekends, one sees empty beds in hospitals and in my constituency I frequently hear of people being sent home on Friday evenings and asked to return on Monday mornings. That should not happen. I realise that extra capacity is required for emergencies but hospitals should not send sick people home at weekends, as is often the case. That matter needs to be addressed.

I wish to highlight the dangers faced by hospital staff in accident and emergency units. I have spoken to nursing staff and the Garda about an incident in Tullamore last week. Gardaí had to be called to put somebody into an ambulance and then had to follow the patient to the hospital's accident and emergency room where they spent much of the evening keeping a woman under control at great risk to others, including themselves. Had those gardaí not been available due to another crisis in the town, with the limited number of gardaí on duty, hospital staff would have suffered the consequences. We should examine others proposals and in this context I support my colleague's idea of wet rooms to ensure that safety for hospital staff and other patients is a priority.

I reiterate my opposition to the Minister's proposals to build private hospitals on public hospital sites. It is accepted that, by their very nature, private hospitals want to make money, so they will cherrypick the most profitable and least care-intensive procedures. They are there to make money. However, public hospitals' land is a diminishing resource, especially in our major towns, so it should be kept for public use.

I also question the facilities available in the community because they are putting pressure on our hospital system. For example, Edenderry with a population of 9,000 has only four GPs. Over one weekend last year, two of the GPs were sick and a third was on holidays so one GP was left to cover 9,000 people. There is still no out-of-hours patient service in the midlands, so the only alternative for such people is to attend an accident and emergency unit. The lack of an ambulance service in a town such as Edenderry causes its own difficulties. These matters have to be examined.

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