Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick East, Labour)

The words were: "Health cuts hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped". We would use the term "disabled" now instead of "handicapped". That is exactly what health cuts do, and the Department of Health and Children has borne the brunt of this, despite what was said yesterday to the effect that somehow or other health and education would be protected. Precisely the opposite has happened. The Minister of Education and Science said today that the 3% cut would apply to his Department after all. The Minister for Health and Children has admitted that €144.35 million will be cut from her budget. A very small part of it will be cuts in advertising, consultancy and so on. The bulk of the cuts will affect precisely those three categories of people, the old, the sick and disabled. My colleague, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, will talk about what is happening to the disabled. However, some €110 million was set aside on foot of the fair deal legislation concerning the elderly and practically all of that — €85 million — is going back into the Department and the HSE to be spent on God knows what, but certainly not on the elderly.

We have, in that context, people who cannot afford to pay for nursing homes and cannot get public beds. In some cases they are in acute hospitals, where they should not be, when other people need those beds. They are at their wits end and should not have to worry at that stage in their lives about the type of things they are concerned about. If it is not too late, I again urge that this money be used to alleviate that level of hardship.

There are other savings which we are told are coming from the development funding in the budget. That money was identified for things such as care of the elderly, the disability sector, the roll out of cancer services, national screening services, radiation oncology and immunisation. Are we to see these things cut and no effort to bring about any type of proper planning as regards what should be done about the HSE? It was set up with an enormous bureaucracy and the Minister, Deputy Harney, explained this last week. The entire edifice was put in place, and then she said, "Now is the time to take out the bits we do not need". That is like building a 50-room house and then deciding that only six are needed. To take out the rooms is a crazy idea. The HSE should have been properly set up from the outset.

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