James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to correct the record of the House. My focus, and my reason for entering politics, is patient welfare. As a practising GP, I watched in frustration the ongoing shambles of a chaotic health service that had billions of taxpayers' money poured into it with no net effect. The consequence of that was that in January 2011, a mere two years ago, we had 569 people lying on trolleys despite the previous government and the then Minister for Health stating clearly that this would be treated as a national emergency. If that was how a national emergency was to be dealt with, God help us if we had a major national emergency. Of course, we did ultimately have such an emergency because we had to give away our financial sovereignty due to the mismanagement of the previous government.

The focus here is on outcomes for patients. It is about making this a service for patients and not a self-serving system which is what we inherited from the previous government.

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