Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important debate. I welcome the Fine Gael motion, which is timely and, I hope, will bring to bear on the Government backbenchers the need to stand up for once in their lives.

I am not critical of the staff of Our Lady's Children's Hospital, nor of the families, who deserve our praise for the contribution they have made to try to help children in need. I also praise the contribution of the hundreds of thousands of people who make donations to Our Lady's Children's Hospital, because without those charitable donations the situation in the hospital would be much worse than is the case at present.

One of the areas on which I wish to concentrate is that which the Minister of State, Deputy Moloney, tried to defend, namely, the increased spend on private hospital procedures for children in recent years. In a five-year period it increased by 8,400%. I received that information in a reply from the Minister, Deputy Harney. In 2004 the amount of money spent on the National Treatment Purchase Fun and on outsourcing of other private operations was €54,000. Last year the spend had increased to €4.615 million. One can work out the maths. That is more than €4.5 million that did not go to a public children's hospital. That is the privatisation of public health care, in particular, children's health care.

The result is that Our Lady's Children's Hospital cannot operate properly. One operating theatre and one ward have already closed and are not due to re-open. The HSE spin doctors who said today and yesterday that there was a reversal of the decision were talking rubbish. The announcement that further cuts will not take place is a relief but I deplore the fact that children and their parents who are dependent on outpatient facilities will have to wait for their appointments in the future due to closures for a week here and a week there. The result will be the cancellation of 7,000 outpatient appointments in the next few months because the HSE cannot appoint relief staff, invest in the hospital or in the health care of our children.

Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin, is operating ahead of its care plan in every respect. It treats more inpatients, deals with more day cases and caters for more outpatients than was planned when the hospital drew up this year's care plan. The HSE's reward for the hospital doing its job properly, treating sick children quicker and using the hospital to its full capacity, with in excess of 85% bed occupancy, which is one of the highest in Europe, is that the Government is starving the hospital of funds required to deliver the best possible medical care for our children.

The moves by the Minister, Deputy Harney, the HSE's cuts in funding and refusal to fund will result in a cancellation of more than 2,000 operations. That is the figure also supplied by the HSE. Approximately 2,000 operations are carried out in almost every theatre in the hospital and that will be the effect if one closes one theatre. That will result in delays, injury and pain for children who are dependent on those operations. At the end of the day it is children whom we are talking about. Often they do not understand what is happening to them. They have no alterative, as they are dependent on their parents and us as legislators to try to address the problems they have.

The Minister has an opportunity, not just to fund her friends in Anglo Irish Bank to the tune of €4 billion, she can spend a few bob here-----

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