Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail)

I support my party colleague, Deputy Kelleher's amendment as well as the broad thrust of the motion put forward by Sinn Féin. I have been very disappointed at what we have seen from the Government to date, which was essentially that the current Government parties made grand promises to get into Government only for them to turn around afterwards and renege on those promises. I saw at first hand the situation in the north west during the general election, where Labour Party and Fine Gael candidates gave cast-iron guarantees that services would be returned to Sligo hospital within 100 days of the election, only for those election promises to be shown up for what they were.

In the short time available to me, I will concentrate on Letterkenny General Hospital, with which I am most familiar and which counts most to the constituents of Donegal North-East. The Minister, Deputy Reilly, in recent days issued a diktat that there is no way he will consider hospitals running over budget. When one considers this, it can only mean one thing, namely, treatments which otherwise would have been carried out will not be carried out.

As an example, Letterkenny General Hospital had a budget last year of €103 million compared to a budget of €95 million this year. This, coupled with the fact that it last year ran €4.5 million over budget, shows the strain being put on the hospital to deliver the service expected of it. Given the service it is operating at present, the hospital is facing an overrun of more than €6 million this year. For this to be addressed, the only option is that the hospital stops providing some of the services it currently provides and cuts back on other services. Letterkenny General Hospital is different from other hospitals in that 90% of the treatments carried out there are non-elective, which means cases come through the door on a day-to-day basis and are not scheduled, which does not allow the hospital the same measure of control.

I urge the Minister, with the representatives of the hospitals which are currently finding difficulty in providing services, and before he issues a diktat stating they cannot run over their budgets, to ascertain what exactly this would mean for the individual hospitals. We cannot have a situation where people are left in pain and waiting months for treatment and operations to be carried out because we cannot afford to do them. We must give the no. 1 priority to health.

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