Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

It is regrettable the Minister for Health and Children is not here. The Minister of State, Deputy Devins, might confirm whether her absence is due to her going to the Super Bowl in the United States. I would have thought a debate in this House on the problems within our health service, particularly those highlighted by my colleague, deserves greater priority than it is being given.

I wish to concentrate on cystic fibrosis patients and to add to what my colleague, Deputy Reilly, has said. The manner in which we have treated cystic fibrosis patients and their parents and families is a national disgrace and scandal. There are over 1,100 patients with cystic fibrosis in Ireland and, as has been said, the highest proportion of patients per head of population of any other country in the world. It is a damning indictment of Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats health policy over the past 11 years that a person born in this State with cystic fibrosis has an average life expectancy which is ten years less than a patient in similar circumstances suffering from cystic fibrosis anywhere in the United Kingdom or in Northern Ireland.

At a time of unprecedented economic success, the Government has failed abysmally to implement the recommendations of the Pollock report published three years ago. This month we celebrate the third anniversary of the publication of that report. It recommended urgent action to address the dangerously inadequate staffing levels; the designation of a small number of adequately staffed fully supported cystic fibrosis centres throughout the country; that adult provision outside Dublin should be developed urgently to create a balanced service with broad geographical coverage, thus reducing the excessive burden on St. Vincent's Hospital; that all beds for cystic fibrosis patients should be in single en suite facilities to prevent cross-infection; that links between the adult and children's units be strengthened; that a microbiology reference laboratory be established — some have proposed that it be established in Tallaght; and that we have neonatal screening programmes. Few, if any, of these recommendations have been implemented in the three years since the publication of the report.

Some €4.7 million in funding was set aside in the 2006 budget, announced in November 2005, for the recruitment of 57 additional specialist staff. Some 20% of the 2006 allocation remains unspent and specialist staffing levels remain inadequate. Budget 2007 allocated an additional €2 million to allow for the recruitment of an additional 30 medical posts. However, according to Godfrey Fletcher, the CEO of the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland, there is no evidence that this funding is being used. The HSE working group on cystic fibrosis, established in May 2005, finished its work in August 2006. Over a year later, it has not published its findings. What is the reason for the suppression of this report?

As is the position in adult hospitals, many of the cystic fibrosis units, including those relating to paediatrics and the clinic in Crumlin Children's Hospital, do not have ring-fenced, dedicated inpatient wards with single en suite rooms to prevent cross-infection. There is a need to urgently establish such facilities in tandem with providing them for adult patients who suffer from cystic fibrosis. This need was highlighted as recently as Thursday last by Dr. Gerard Canny of the cystic fibrosis unit in Crumlin Children's Hospital in a letter to The Irish Times. When I raised it in the Dáil last Thursday afternoon, the Minister had no short-term solutions to provide the facilities needed for children suffering from cystic fibrosis.

It is appalling that neither the HSE nor the Department of Health and Children urgently responded to the need for single en suite hospital facilities for adult cystic fibrosis patients until the publicity of recent weeks highlighting the gross inadequacy of existing services and the extent to which lives are being placed at risk. For cystic fibrosis patients, this is not a debating issue; it is a life and death one. It is a life and death issue which the Government has to date chosen to ignore.

The promised new ward to be built in St. Vincent's Hospital, contrary to the dishonest perception created by the Minister, will, as Deputy Reilly said, take four years to come on stream. An announcement was made that construction would start this year. When I questioned the Minister last Thursday, it emerged that construction would start in November or December 2008. That was the January 2008 position. Construction will take 24 months and thereafter the hospital wing constructed will have to be commissioned. We are four years away from that facility.

It is also not good enough that we do not yet have neonatal screening of all babies at birth for cystic fibrosis. This has been provided for all newborn babies in Northern Ireland since 1983, some 25 years. In the past two weeks, the HSE intimated that there was a possibility that it would commence this year in this State. When I asked the Minister last Thursday if she could confirm with certainty that it would commence in 2008, we were told by her that she could not. The benefit of neonatal screening is that cystic fibrosis is detected early and necessary treatments are provided early. In this country, the average age of detection for children is two years which means treatment starts later than is desirable.

It is truly nauseating that, in its proposed amendment to the Fine Gael motion, the Government applauds itself on the services provided by it to cystic fibrosis patients. The truth is it should hang its head in shame. The truth is that not only Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats, which have now been in continuous Government for almost 11 years, bear responsibility for the inadequacies in our cystic fibrosis services, but so too does the Green Party which failed to make the needs in this area a priority issue in the Agreed Programme for Government. The truth is that without the recent public furore, the 14 en suite rooms to become available in St. Vincent's Hospital this year would not have been promised or be constructed.

The tragic reality is that neither the Minister nor her immediate predecessors in the Department of Health and Children regarded the plight of cystic fibrosis sufferers as a priority. This tragic reality was cruelly expressed by the HSE, I am advised, in replies forwarded by it during the previous Dáil to questions tabled by some Members. When explaining the HSE's abject failure to provide vital services, it did so in financial terms by referring insensitively to "cost benefit analysis", by implication indicating that it would not get value for money by providing essential facilities required to extend the lifespan of cystic fibrosis sufferers and to protect them from cross-infection when admitted to hospital. It is simply not good enough.

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