Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

We are spending €16,000 million of taxpayers' money on a system that is not working. It is a two tier system that is not patient centred and has gone down the road of building private hospitals on public lands. We know from our analysis of what we can bring in each year that those savings would be better put back into the front-line services of nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and so on, but the Taoiseach will not even consider that.

I was in Cabra one morning recently with Deputy Brian Hayes when two women approached me to say that two days previously a 92 year old woman had fallen on the street. She lay on the footpath for 45 minutes before an ambulance arrived. Medics had to strip the woman on the pavement to attend to her bruises and other injuries. That is not the kind of system over which Deputy Brian Cowen should stand. That is not the kind of system the people of the country want.

I recall the letter from Susie Long. I recall the case that was argued here when the late Pat Joe Walsh bled to death. I recall the thousands of cases that have been raised by Deputy after Deputy about our inadequate health system, and the Government has refused to even attempt to reform this system.

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