James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

The Minister can wag her head all she wants. Furthermore, she very conveniently neglected to mention her failed and utterly discredited co-location hospital policy. Regarding cystic fibrosis, it is the Minister's duty not just to apportion funds, but also to ensure that those funds are used for the purposes for which they have been allocated and that tendering processes etc. are done in a way that result in the desired outcome that people expect. However, that is not happening. Because it is designed to be paid at the end, in the current economic climate I warrant that the Minister will have grave difficulty getting tenders to go through successfully. In the meantime Irish citizens, many of them living in my constituency are being disadvantaged to the point where they die ten years younger than their counterparts in the North of Ireland do. That is real. It is real for Orla Tinsley who spoke from her hospital bed on radio this week. We are not talking about theoretical situations here; we are talking about reality.

The Minister now wants to deny her own words. In direct response to what I said, the Minister now wants to revisit the context and change the context. What she said is very simple. She said: "I am happy to agree with Deputy Reilly's suggestion." I read the suggestion into the record of the House twice and Deputy Creighton has read it in once. The Minister can shake her head all she likes, but it is in black and white for the people to judge for themselves. What little credibility she had is rapidly diminishing.

The cancer strategy is not unlike the concept of the HSE. The devil is in the detail. There is nothing wrong with the concept of the HSE to provide health care for 4.2 million people. However, the manner in which the Minister went about it, amalgamating ten health boards and a shared services unit without anybody being asked to take redundancy, with everyone guaranteed to keep his or her job and stay in the same job has led to the total dysfunctionality we have. The chief executive officer, Professor Drumm, whom the Minister appointed, told our party before I even joined it that there were 3,500 people who did not even know what their jobs were. Nobody in this House believes any longer in the ability of the HSE to look after children in care or run our health service. It is completely discredited which is a terribly sad thing to have to say about the many excellent people who work in the HSE, in administration and medical-wise in nursing and many other areas.

Let us consider the Minister's cancer strategy, with which I agreed in principle. I have no problem with the centralisation of services for specialised treatment. However, I object to her methodology and the very devious use of statistics to compare outcomes for breast cancer patients from the west coast vis-À-vis the east coast using figures for 2003-04 when there was no specialist in breast cancer, radiology specialising in mammography and pathology in Sligo. As five years survival means five years, the figures from 2003-04 relate to 1998-99 before these people were present. However, when the figures from 2007 relating back to 2002 are compared, they are every bit as good in the north west as they were on the east coast.

The Minister allows private facilities in Dublin to act as satellites with hospitals in America, but she has an issue with Sligo General Hospital doing it with the University College Hospital in Galway, and yet she reproduces that model in Letterkenny. It is the inconsistency and unfairness that bother people. I wanted to address those issues as the Minister raised them.

I wish to return to the core issue, which is that people have a deep concern about what will happen to St Luke's Hospital. I support the Labour amendment, but I can understand the argument that it ties the Minister's hands. My amendment allows us to revisit it in this House. In the Minister's own words that was what she was happy to agree to. However, something has happened in the interim and she wants to reframe everything. For some reason unknown to me, she does not want to agree to what is an extremely reasonable compromise.

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