Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am here to express my support for and my confidence in the Minister for Health and the huge challenge that he has been left by the outgoing Fianna Fáil Administration.

For more than ten years the people opposite failed in the best of times to deliver a quality health service. In times of plenty they had the unique distinction of making the situation worse. I cannot believe, having listened to all the pious clap-trap over the past number of months about Fianna Fáil not being interested in the old Punch and Judy politics or opposition for opposition's sake and that it will not play games, that its members can come in here with this codology, authored by the man who created the problem, the man who created the Health Service Executive, HSE. If I were Deputy Micheál Martin and I had done to this country what he did to this country, and to the health service in particular, I would crawl under a stone in the Burren and start to commune with nature for the rest of time I would be around. It is appalling. The Minister in his contribution quoted Bill Clinton to the Republicans when he said: "Remember. What you are complaining about is the speed that it takes us to clean up your mess." That is the situation that we have been left with.

We should look at the question of access for patients, which is the critical issue. We should look at the trolley count. We should look at the fact that today, 18 September, the trolley count is 223 trolleys. That is 223 trolleys too many but half of what the figure was last year, and a great deal less than half of the 569 that Mary Harney brought it to when she was propping up the Fianna Fáil Government that brought this country to the edge of the precipice and threatened us with ruin.

The Minister is attempting to deal with this challenge in terms of access for patient care, in terms of resources, and in terms of laying the foundation for a universal health insurance system in this country. He deserves support in that challenge and not the kind of hypocrisy-----

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