Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate.

It seems clear that the real agenda behind the closing of wards in Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin is ideological and it is not only monetary. It is skewed logic to believe that the case for the centralisation of paediatric care in Dublin will be strengthened by running down the quality of service offered in Crumlin hospital. If money alone is the issue, there are plenty of ways the Government and the HSE could make up the €9.1 million shortfall. The HSE spent €17 million on spin doctors and management consultants in 2008. This money could pay for the reopening of the wards in Crumlin hospital and the cervical cancer vaccine for 12-year old girls. A 17% reduction in the HSE's €60 million taxi spend would meet the budgetary shortfall of the hospital for 2009 while a 20% reduction in the €50 million spent on renting prefabs for schools would ensure children could access a full suite of services in Our Lady's hospital.

However, this is not only about money. The HSE and Government remain hell-bent on following the plans of a Minister whose own party and its ideology regarding health care is defunct. Across the world the health strategies espoused by the Progressive Democrats, which are closer to Boston than Berlin, are being rejected even in the bastion of capitalism, the United States. This ideology extends from co-location of private hospitals on public lands to running down paediatric hospitals to promote the case for the centralisation of services on a patently unsuitable site. I have no quarrel with the concept of centralisation of medical services if the decision is based on sound medical care and services but I have an issue when it is railroaded through at the cost of a vital service to certain sectors of the community for reasons that have little to do with the provision of good health services.

I refer to the issue of fund-raising and the burden placed on families and friends to raise money for basic health care services for children. Even in good times we faced a scenario whereby the children's hospital had to spend valuable time and resources on fund-raising and to depend on the goodwill of many generous people. The need to make funds available is more acute than ever but it is also more difficult than ever to raise funds from people who are penalised through heavy taxation measures and who are also fund-raising for their local school playground, sports club and every other facility that should be provided by the State.

Without these very generous donors, our public health service for the children who attend Our Lady's Hospital would be in much worse condition. Even with the about-turn by the HSE yesterday, one ward will still remain closed. Aside from that, it is a disgrace that public and political pressure forces the Government and the HSE to capitulate, not the fact that children's health will be significantly affected.

The Government constantly accuses the Opposition of histrionics whenever we highlight the scale of indebtedness it plans to lump upon taxpayers, such as with the blanket bank guarantee and now with NAMA. These decisions are saddling every household in the State with enormous debts, while those who ran up those debts in banks and development companies remain in situ. If we think it appropriate to saddle the next generations with the debts of a greedy and favoured few, then we can afford at least to give people proper health services. While the favoured few are being bailed out, operations are cancelled or postponed, children are added to waiting lists and stressed-out parents are left to worry about their sick children.

I have no doubt but that the staff of Our lady's Hospital will do what they have always done, namely, go that extra mile for the children in their care. However, there is only so much anybody can do without resources and funding. Our Lady's Hospital is located in my constituency and I am acutely aware of the service it provides for children throughout the country and, more specifically, the medical care it provides for many local people who have brought their children there in emergencies. I am one of those people who has personal knowledge of the exceptional medical care offered by Our Lady's, having once over-nighted there with a favourite nephew.

In the last analysis, it is down to the Minister to decide how the resources are to be allocated. Our Lady's Hospital and the children in its care should not be the fall guys for the mismanagement of the finances of this country.

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