James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

I welcome the support of the Labour Party for this motion. The motion is self-explanatory but the rationale behind it requires further elucidation. At the core of it is the question of trust. What is at issue is whether the people of the north west and west can trust the Government, the Minister for Health and Children and the monolithic Health Service Executive to deliver the services they have promised.

Let us look at the record. In January 2007, the Minister, Deputy Harney, and the then Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, gave a commitment in an interview on Newstalk that there would be no cutbacks in health. That proved not to be the case. The Minister then said that the cutbacks would not hurt patients, but they did. We saw the closure of wards, the cancellation of operating lists, increasing numbers of patients lying on trolleys, a 10% increase in waiting times for procedures, the withdrawal of home help packages for children and people with disabilities, the removal of home help for the elderly alongside the more recent suspension of hospital in the home scheme and the failure to implement the vision for change in mental health, with 50% of the funds allotted going elsewhere. Susie Long died after waiting seven months for a colonoscopy, while Beverly Seville Doyle died on her own in the early hours of the morning while attached to a drip in an accident and emergency unit toilet. These are but two of the tragedies we have seen last year.

We must also consider some of the other issues that have arisen. A debacle arose in breast cancer care in Portlaoise because the Minister ignored early warnings from Mr. Peter Naughton in 2005, with the scandalous result that nine women were misdiagnosed with cancer and 97 women were callously left waiting until a cohort — or a boxcar — was filled before action was taken. We had the Barringtons hospital affair in which letters were passed back and forth for 19 months before real action was taken over the breast cancer services offered there. We encountered problems in laboratories in Cork and Galway regarding a locum pathologist.

Most recently, a scandal arose in the north east, where locum radiologists were used for several years despite a health board warning in 2001 that this was a major problem. The problem was highlighted by Judge Maureen Harding Clarke but nothing was done. The HSE knew about the misdiagnosis of lung cancer when four people died in November 2007 but it waited several months to do anything about it, made a hames of its response and then blamed the problem on a private company. Approximately 4,600 people have to wait anxiously for eight weeks to find out whether they have a serious medical problem, despite having previously received the all clear.

The damning Fitzgerald and Doherty reports underscore the dysfunctional nature of the HSE and its inability to deliver safe and effective treatment. When the Minister announced her cancer strategy last year, she closed 13 centres which provided breast cancer care. Patients in Ennis were advised to go to Galway or Limerick. The following week, however, cutbacks were introduced which prompted the medical board of the Galway hospital to state that its five day breast cancer service would be reduced to three days. That is not reassuring.

There is the continuing preoccupation with the privatisation of our health service, the co-location of hospitals and, in particular, the recent bizarre decision to outsource cervical smears to an American company which has been found to be recalcitrant in its behaviour. In 1998, 2001 and 2004, the aforementioned company was fined a total of $40 million for fraudulent claims. The situation now arises whereby a company which has been fined nearly $500 million in America will provide dialysis for patients in Limerick.

See this speech in context