Niall Collins (Limerick West, Fianna Fail)

——contributed to the demise of the health services. If we are honest we must ask what was the result. We had deficits in funding, infrastructure, human resources and strategy. Everything has had to play catch-up in the past 12 to 15 years. We must acknowledge the levels of funding now available. We have invested in our infrastructures. Hospitals are being built and improved. Our human resources are being improved. We are engaging more consultants, doctors and nurses, all frontline staff of the kind that everybody wants to see. We have a redundancy programme coming down the line for the administration staff that everybody has a problem with, whom people seem to want to lose.

Let us keep this in context. I welcome the recent coverage and debate we have had in respect of reconfiguration in the mid west. It was refreshing to see an input from independent people who work on the frontline. That was the first time in a long while that we have not had the entire debate crowded by politicians, including all of us in this House, thereby letting it descend into a political slagging match.

These are the frontline people who are charged with the delivery of the service and they have staked their reputations on that. Let us listen to them because they are qualified, independent and they know their work. I am certainly happy to buy into what they say. I mention, in particular, Paul Burke and Cathal O'Donnell.

I can understand the concern expressed by people in counties Clare and Tipperary. However, there is a change. For the people in those counties to whom I speak — in my party we do not confine ourselves merely to our own constituencies — in Tipperary, Nenagh and Ennis——

See this speech in context