Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

On behalf of the Sinn Féin Members I support the motion in the name of the Fine Gael and Labour Deputies and I reject the Government's amendment.

I welcome the fact that last night the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, set aside her script and replied to the points made by Members in the debate. I read her remarks with interest. If she really believes half of what she said, then we are in more trouble than I thought.

Her amendment to the motion proposes that her plan to allocate land at public hospital sites to the developers of private for-profit hospitals will free up 1,000 beds currently reserved for private patients for use by public patients "in the most cost-effective way". Given that we have no costing at all for the Minister's madcap co-location plan, it is breathtaking that she can describe it as the most cost-effective way to provide additional public beds. This is nonsense. In the face of growing opposition to the co-location plan, "1,000 beds" has now become the mantra. It is near time the Minister told us where the figure of 1,000 beds comes from and where exactly these beds will be located.

The Government and its predecessors have all defended the two-tier public-private system which put private beds in public hospitals in the first place. The Minister still defends it, yet expects to be taken seriously when she says that her hospital privatisation plan is designed for the benefit of the public patient. This again is nonsense. She cannot get away from the fact that in 2001 the Government's own health strategy estimated that an additional 3,000 beds were required to replace beds taken out of the system in the 1980s and 1990s and to cater for our growing and ageing population. In a most dishonest way, the Government amendment states that they have provided 1,200 "inpatient beds and day treatment places", thus using the day treatment figures to bump up the hospital bed figures.

The Minister appears to be talking tough when it comes to hospital consultants. However, as far back as 2001 in the health strategy, the Government promised that it would re-negotiate the contract with hospital consultants to ensure greater equity for public hospital patients and that this would be done by 2002. However, in 2007, an elite of hospital consultants is still allowed to draw massive salaries from the public purse while spending much of their time treating private patients in private for-profit hospitals and clinics. I ask the House to guess who gets more time and better treatment. The consultants have delayed negotiations for over five years in order to defend this indefensible contract. The Minister tried to appear outraged at this last night, but where was she and the Government for the past decade? They and their predecessors negotiated and maintained this privileged position for consultants to the detriment of the public patient.

The Minister, Deputy Harney, now claims to be standing up to the consultants but she has totally undermined the Government's position because while she "talks tough" about the consultants' private work, she is driving forward with her disgraceful privatisation co-location plan. In reply to a Dáil question from me last week, the Minister said tendering for these private hospitals will begin in March. If this goes ahead, the State will be tied into legal contracts and the privatisation plan will be implemented with no mandate and within weeks of a general election. The plan should be scrapped now.

The latest embarrassment for the Health Service Executive is the fact revealed by a citizen who contacted my office yesterday. The HSE has confirmed that supplies of the BCG vaccine have run out, leaving a gap of several weeks in the vaccination programme and causing worry to parents of newborn children. The HSE blames the suppliers but how was the stock allowed to run out?

Members of the Irish Nurses Organisation and the Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland have voted for industrial action which will take place unless the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government changes its stonewalling attitude to the nurses' just demand for a 35-hour week and the resolution of serious pay anomalies. The IMPACT trade union, which represents thousands of workers in the health services, has also threatened industrial action because of the treatment of its members. It has highlighted the Government's ceiling on recruitment and its obsession with privatisation.

The health crisis requires a radical response. The public health system must be defended against privatisation. The two-tier system must be challenged. There is no halfway house between where we are now and a fully public system based on the right to health care for all. This is what the people of this State deserve and demand.

See this speech in context