Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív, stated that the HSE is an impossible organisation with which to deal and that he can make neither head nor tail of it. He was a member of the Cabinet that invented, designed, framed and legislated for the HSE and brought it into being. If he can make neither head nor tail of it, what chance has a patient who is trying to get an operation, a parent who is trying to get an appointment with a speech therapist, or a carer who is trying to get home help and finds it impossible to penetrate the maze?

A month ago the HSE put an embargo on the recruitment of staff. That includes nurses, doctors, paramedics, the lot. It wants us to believe, and the Government supports it, that this will have no effect on patients. It does not have to recruit staff and we are to believe patients will not suffer. However, today we hear that operations are being cancelled at Cavan General Hospital because a consultant anaesthetist has gone on holidays and the HSE will not allow the hospital to hire a locum. We hear that the number of days on which breast cancer patients can be seen for biopsies at University College Hospital Galway has been cut from five to three. The head of MS Ireland said that people with debilitating neurological disorders have had physiotherapy, respite and home help services cancelled as a result of the cutbacks. We are told that an orthopaedic ward in Merlin Park hospital in Galway is due to close. All of this is in addition to the 41,000 people on hospital waiting lists and the bed closures in Tullamore, Clonmel, Limerick and Sligo about which I spoke yesterday.

By any standards, these cutbacks in the health service are affecting patients. The Taoiseach can come into this House as often as he likes and drown us in figures and results of surveys from places such as UCD. People who have used the health service will, when asked, say their experiences have been good. We have a good health service; the problem is accessing it.

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