Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I thank Deputy Ciarán Lynch for sharing time. From a position of having had three maternity hospitals, we now have one maternity hospital in Cork. It is about time the Minister for Health and Children came into the House and took responsibility for what is happening in our health services. I know what the Minister of State will say when she stands up.

One does not have a choice in Cork. There is one maternity facility which is, by any standard, probably one of the most modern in Europe. However, the difficulty is that what is available in that hospital is not available to the public. On 22 November 2007 I tabled a series of parliamentary questions about this issue. In every instance, the replies I received were about how good was the hospital, the number of theatres and the number of gynaecologists but what the Minister and the HSE did not say was that there are two theatres in that new facility which are chained. There are chains on the doors of the fully equipped facility but there are no staff. Neither was I told the number of women awaiting procedures.

When a GP has to write to politicians to tell them their patients' lives are being put at risk, it is a sad state of affairs. At the Joint Committee on Health and Children today I listened once again to news of a delayed inquiry into awful things that happened in our health service. Are we looking at another possible misdiagnosis in the whole area of women's health and is that what the Minister is prepared to stand over?

I have heard the Minister say on numerous occasions that this facility is one of the best hospitals in the country. Would the staff of any hotel go out and tell the outside world that the hotel was not working properly? The answer, of course, is no. We are not talking about bed and breakfast here but people's lives. The Minister has to take responsibility for the fact that the taxpayers have put in place a state-of-the-art facility. It is her job to staff it and ensure patients get the best treatment possible.

One of other answers I got in regard to the da Vinci robot was that the first procedure was carried out in September. This particular robot will continue to give a service which will ensure that patients will have very little scarring, very little invasion and will spend less time in hospitals. Is this not the way forward? What that reply did not tell us was that robot has yet to come into operation. It was an insult to be told that the consultants in this area are putting together a cohort of patients to be treated by this robot. The patients are queueing down the road. There is no need to put a cohort of patients in place, they are waiting for this treatment. The Minister has to take responsibility. It is an absolute scandal.

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