Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

It is now virtually impossible to pick up a newspaper or listen to a news bulletin without learning of a further crisis in the health service. Last week, we had the story of failures in X-ray services in the north east. Last Monday night, a "Prime Time Investigates" programme showed the dilapidation of our health service, including the case of an elderly woman trying to cope with caring for her husband, a stroke victim, without a home help. Medical experts are warning of a diabetes epidemic and we have the continuing trend towards the privatisation of the health service.

Today we learn that 100 jobs are to be cut in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin. I understand those affected are mainly agency and temporary workers who have been taken on by the hospital because the recruitment embargo prevented it from recruiting in the normal manner. We are told, by way of a circular issued by the hospital yesterday, that 100 staff will be removed from the hospital because the Health Service Executive has given it €14 million less than its projected expenditure this year. One cannot take 100 staff out of a hospital without affecting patient services. This measure will inevitably result in sick children not getting the treatment they need in the hospital and parents of sick children being told their child will have to wait because the hospital is unable to provide the services it should provide.

All the crises in the health service come back to the failure of the HSE, the instrument established by the Government to run the health services, to manage the health service properly. I have two questions for the Taoiseach. First, what will be done to ensure Crumlin hospital has the staff it requires to treat the sick children who present for treatment and to assure the House that in different economic circumstances, cuts in expenditure will not be made in areas which affect the most vulnerable, among whom are children who are ill and need treatment? Second, will the Taoiseach take up the proposals developed by the Labour Party's spokesperson on health, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, and published by my party last week for the reform of the health service and, in particular, the HSE? It is manifestly clear the HSE is not managing and running the health service to deliver the quality of care required.

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