Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

The first sight I had of this legislation was yesterday. None of us is happy with that nor I am quite certain is the Minister. I support the Bill because it is necessary for us to fill this gap next week and I recognise this Government is in office for a very short time and that it will take time to deliver change. However, there is nothing more certain than we will be back here with amendments. One cannot rush things and anticipate every eventuality. Issues will arise which are unintended.

We have been told in recent weeks that it will take more than one Dáil term to implement fully a new health care system. Will we see a turnover of junior hospital doctors throughout the term of this Dáil? Is this an emergency and a temporary measure or is it an emergency measure which will become permanent? We have been told the majority of doctors are likely to come from India and Pakistan. Reading the Minister's speech, I note they may well be more qualified than some of the people who have just trained here and may well have some specialties. Those countries can probably ill-afford to lose these doctors.

These doctors will not arrive alone and they will have families. Has any provision been made for their families because people coming to work here must be treated humanely? I echo the point Deputy Finian McGrath made that these doctors keep our hospitals going. Anyone who has had a family member in and out of hospital will know it simply would not function without foreign nationals, including many people from outside the European Union. Foreign doctors working in our hospitals is nothing new.

I am concerned that when we close a small hospital, the feeder hospital to which people go is not, in some cases, receiving additional supports. Last week I received a telephone call from a man who was diagnosed with early prostate cancer. For administrative reasons, his operation in a large teaching hospital in Dublin did not proceed in the middle of June and was rescheduled for the middle of July. I contacted the admissions nurse to find out whether it was likely to proceed on that date. The man was told to telephone the day before or the morning of the operation. That man is really worried about his cancer progressing. I was quite shocked by what nurse said. She said she was cancelling operations on a daily basis, that people were arriving in ambulances and that there was an obvious need for their surgery to proceed on a particular day because they could see blood in urine and so on.

This is not just about Roscommon, Navan and Loughlinstown; it is about the whole system. If we transfer services from one hospital to a centre of excellence, it is essential that it is able to cope with the additional capacity, otherwise our health care system will fail. I am very concerned that it will fail this man who is one of a very large number of people. It is only one story but it is the most important thing that has ever happened to him and it is a story that is repeated. I have major concerns about the lack of integration.

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