Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

The Taoiseach does not understand this problem at all. The distinction he is making between urgent and non-urgent is missing the point. I listened to Dr. Martin Daly speaking on radio the other morning where he made the distinction between urgent and non-urgent. Urgent is where a general practitioner concludes that somebody is already sick and must be seen immediately. Non-urgent is where a general practitioner is concerned that there are some symptoms that need to be checked out.

Suzie Long's case was non-urgent. That is why she waited seven months. She is now dead. Last October I raised her case here with the Taoiseach at the request of her family. They were concerned that no other patient would have to suffer as she and her family suffered, and that a test, which in any decent health service would be available within a matter of days or certainly weeks, took seven months for her.

We have reports that people are waiting up to 18 months for a colonoscopy because, the Taoiseach states, they are non-urgent. He makes it sound like it is some kind of cosmetic procedure they are looking for. These are people who doctors have concluded need to be checked out and they must wait 18 months.

As the Taoiseach wandered around Europe last week, and in all of his visits to various European capitals, has he found any other country where people must wait 18 months for a cancer test? Our health service is a disgrace. His Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, describes it as not acceptable that people should have to wait that length of time for a cancer test. Neither is it acceptable to have a Minister for Health and Children presiding over that kind of system, and it is not acceptable that a Government that has been in office for almost 11 years has allowed this to happen. Even when somebody gets a cancer test, he or she has no guarantee that the test will turn out to be accurate. We are now waiting for seven reports on the various inaccuracies there have been in cancer tests that we know about in Portlaoise, Cork, Galway and other centres.

This week we find an attempt at covering it up. The Irish Examiner, in an article this week, quotes from emails between the current Government press secretary and the former Government press secretary:

In consultation with the Department of Health and Children, it was decided not to go into detail in relation to the numbers of patients involved . . . Doing so would only serve to cause widespread alarm in the public and unnecessary confusion in the media.

They were referring to how many patients had been seen by the Finnish consultant who was employed in Cork and whose contract has been terminated.

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