Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

One of the extraordinary aspects of today's announcement is what the Taoiseach did not do. Why is the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, still in office? By any standards, she should be removed from office. While I acknowledge she has been a good Minister in other Departments and has made a major contribution to public life, her record as Minister for Health and Children has been hopeless.

Since 2007, we have had a series of crises in the health service. In August 2007 a HIQA investigation resulted in breast cancer services in Barrington's Hospital in Limerick being suspended. In November of the same year, 97 women had to be re-tested after a review of mammograms in the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise. In September 2008, an inquiry was announced into Ennis General Hospital. In November 2008, nine lung cancer patients received delayed diagnoses. During the Minister's recent absence from the country arising from her visit to New Zealand, we learned that X-rays and letters of referral had not been read in Tallaght hospital.

The Minister's solution to bed shortages and other problems in the health system is to build private clinics under some form of public-private partnership arrangement. Even that policy, misguided as it was, has collapsed in the new economic circumstances. I propose to give two local examples which show where the Government's health policies are failing. On Saturday morning last, I received a telephone call from the family of a patient suffering from bowel cancer who had been admitted to a hospital on Thursday last week and was still on a trolley in the accident and emergency department. When my office contacted the hospital concerned it received this reply:

I spoke to X in A & E. She spoke to Y and his family this morning and explained the bed situation. There are no beds, 3 patients from A & E went to theatre this morning and there are no beds for them either. She does not expect the situation to change within the next 24/36 hours. They are doing the best they can.

This is our health system in 2010, after many years under the Minister, Deputy Harney, whom the Taoiseach has chosen to leave in charge of the service.

I welcome the appointment of my colleague, Deputy Ciarán Cuffe, as Minister of State and wish him well. My constituency is now teeming with Ministers, of whom there are three.

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