Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

My question is specific to the issue of health. Today, 344 people are on hospital trolleys throughout the country. Communities from Roscommon to west Cork to Blanchardstown to Loughlinstown to Tipperary to Galway are outraged because the Government's health policy is in tatters. We have lost 1,000 nurses in the past two years and 6,000 health workers. The number of bed closures climbed to 2,317 in the past few weeks. It is a disaster. Our health service is being massacred. The Taoiseach's Government promised the most ambitious reform programme ever in health care and that there would be no closures of accident and emergency services unless better, and what were seen to be better, services were put in their place.

The Taoiseach needs some advice about what is going on in our health service because lives are at stake. Communities are terrified by the dismantling of their local health, accident and emergency and ambulance services. People have come from Bantry today to protest outside the House about what is happening in west Cork. Who is advising the Taoiseach or is he taking any specific advice on how we will deal with the catastrophe in our accident and emergency and health services throughout the country?

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