Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the opportunity to give my thoughts on this year's health service plan. However, this two-day debate is concerned with statements. There are now only four Members in the Chamber. This is not the proper use of our time. The health service plan is an important issue which should be debated in committee with HSE officials and the Minister present. Members should be able to pose questions and get answers on the plan. If we are to debate the plan, then it should be with those who have the answers and make the decisions on it. This would mean a proper debate rather than this nonsense of four of us in the Chamber making five or ten-minute statements. It is not as if we do not have enough legislation to be getting through in the Chamber. Earlier, we spent just 50 minutes on the Legal Services Regulation Bill, important legislation which the Government tells us must be passed by a certain date because the troika has put down a deadline. Yet despite spending only 50 minutes on that legislation, we will spend another three hours speaking to ourselves in an empty Chamber with no interaction with Ministers or officials on the health service plan. That is not what people put us in here for.

Yesterday my constituency colleague, Deputy Dara Murphy, and a little earlier Deputy Brian Walsh spoke about how they believed it is possible the level of cuts implemented by the Minister in the health budget will not impact on front line health services. Deputy Dara Murphy spoke about the Minister's attempts to address problems in the health service. I do not doubt the sincerity of Ministers when they talk about reforming the health service to reduce waiting lists, achieve a more cost-effective service and create a responsive one-tier system.

I doubt the Minister's ability, however, to achieve that vision because of the policies contained in this plan and the wider health strategy that he is implementing. Deputy Dara Murphy stated the Government's target was to have no patient waiting for more than nine hours on a hospital trolley, making it out it would be some sort of an achievement. Who are we codding with a target of nine hours? The target should be zero. That attitude depresses people listening to debates like this.

I know we are all entrenched in our own political views but we all are passionate about health care and education. I have no problem with others criticising Sinn Féin's policies or the Government's. The defensive attitude taken by Members opposite, however, that the Government is right and everyone else is wrong does not help the debate. We all have good ideas on health care. If we started working together, we could start moving forward. Retreating into the trenches and criticising every single alternative put forward by the Opposition does not help. Yesterday and today, I listened to Government Deputies criticising the Opposition's alternatives. We do not have all the answers but neither do they. We must stop this political posturing when it comes to such important issues such as front line services in health and education. We must get down to brass tacks to do the job for which we were elected, namely reform our political system, get the country back on its feet, create jobs, instead of criticising people for the sake of it.

Last week, I had the unfortunate experience of ending up in Cork University Hospital, CUH, accident and emergency department with my son. When we went in, staff there were already stretched with full waiting rooms and a minimum four-hour wait to see a doctor. After three hours waiting, another trauma case went in which meant it was another seven hours' wait, a total of 11 hours in the CUH. Not only is this unacceptable but I cannot see how the Government's policies can address these problems.

Government Deputies, along with the Minister, believe they can achieve cuts to the health budget without impacting on front line services. It cannot be done. Even the HSE's health service plan states, "Some reductions in services will be unavoidable even with such efficiencies. These will arise in day service, residential and respite services". It is about how we prioritise spending our health budget.

For example, the medical card system is a fiasco. I recently had to make representations on behalf of an individual who needed to renew his medical card but did not complete the necessary paperwork in time. Accordingly, his medical card was cut off. The individual in question requires medication every day. However, he has gone several days without his medication because he cannot afford to buy it. This morning I received an e-mail from the medical card unit informing me it had received the additional paperwork and will revert to us in a couple of weeks. How can a man who cannot afford the medication he needs to take every day be told he must wait another couple of weeks to get his medical card back? We all have heard the radio advertisements that a response on a medical card will be made in 15 days but it is not happening. There is no point in Government Deputies claiming the system is being reformed when the reality on the ground tells us differently.

The service plan states HSE south will lose 170,000 home-help hours when the same plan estimates the number of people requiring home-help hours in the region will increase. Yet the Minister and Government Deputies continue to claim budgetary cuts will not impact on front line services.

It is not credible to suggest that front line services will not be hit when more people are looking for services and services are being reduced. I do not know how anybody could try to justify that argument.

There are alternatives, however, and it is a question of how we prioritise them. For whatever reason, this Government prioritised bondholders over ordinary citizens. The Deputies sitting opposite will say they had no choice in paying unguaranteed bondholders but show me the evidence if that is the case.

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