Patrick Nulty (Dublin West, Labour)

I thank Deputy McLellan for facilitating me in contributing to this important debate. The health service plan leaves no question that taking €750 million from the HSE's budget will have a devastating impact on our health service.

We have choices on meeting our international targets while at the same time protecting health and education. Abolishing property based tax loopholes would yield an additional €450 million this year and increasing capital gains and acquisitions taxes to 40% would yield approximately €250 million. These are political choices the Minister for Finance could have made to provide extra money for health services. I regret that, despite the advice of many groups and economists, those alternatives were not taken.

At the end of this month, 1,739 nurses will leave the public system. This will inevitably result in further bed closures. More than 2,000 beds have already been closed across the country. Further bed closures will have a knock on effect on waiting lists. People will not be diagnosed or given access to treatment as quickly as they need, resulting in more serious health outcomes and greater costs for the Exchequer in the long term. As I have said in previous debates, cuts bluntly implemented do not produce savings. We need to recognise that the agenda of austerity is not working and we need to address that fundamental problem. Savaging our health services will certainly not deal with unemployment or protect our economy in the future.

The budget cut €85 million from hospitals, which will have a serious impact. A saving of €12 million comes from a reduction in the pay at entry level for student nurses, which is a crude attack on young women and men coming into public service to dedicate their lives to public health. The moratorium on public sector recruitment means that speech and language therapists and other specialists cannot be recruited. We are losing five public health nurses at the end of this month. The key point is that it is not an economically sensible way to approach this. Despite what the plan states, many of these hours, for example in the nursing sector, will be made up by agency staff. Where is the saving in that?

In my hand I have the draft cost-containment plan for Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, which serves approximately 300,000 people. The plan was produced as a consequence of the cuts made by the HSE and the Minister for Health, Deputy Reilly. It refers to bed closures, reviewing access to different units and procedures in the hospital and closing day wards. However, section 60 of the report on the emergency department is blank. Three months ago the Minister gave a commitment that the accident and emergency department would be secure and would remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Why does the plan make no mention of it? The Minister, Deputy Reilly, should give a commitment that the accident and emergency department will remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If it does not remain so, the people of Dublin West and the other communities the hospital serves will not accept it and there will be a massive campaign of resistance. We must protect our accident and emergency departments and not blame public servants who are taking massive cuts. There is an agenda among some parties - some in Fine Gael have said it publicly - to attack the Croke Park agreement. That does not represent the future for our health service or our economy. We must rethink, re-engage and ask those who have most to pay most. That is why I do not agree with the plan that has been put before us today.

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