Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Go raibh maith agat, thank you.

Without coming in here, without leaving himself open to questions and to scrutiny, on RTE last night the Minister for Health stated that we may well end up with some accident and emergency departments which cannot be safely manned. He stated that he could certainly say this much, that it will not be any of the major ones, and that it is the small rural hospitals where we are going to have real difficulties. He then went on to say that the crisis will be fixed in so far as it can be fixed.

I asked all the chaps and chapettes who are heckling here last week to go in and check what is happening with their local hospitals. This is not good enough. The Government needs to allow a debate on this issue and the Taoiseach needs to be able to tell us and the Deputies here.

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