Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The real reason they pulled the six hour debate scheduled for today was not because Fianna Fáil had tabled a Private Members' motion on health but that it would have stifled debate. Six hours on top of our three hours would have brought it to nine hours. That would have given Deputies ample time to go through the detail of the HSE service plan and to highlight their concerns and, in the event of praise being required, giving a fair amount of that also.

I would like to think I am reasonably fair as an Opposition spokesperson. If there are areas in the HSE service plan which should be acknowledged, I will do so. For example, an issue on which we all campaigned and for which we are appreciative is the inclusion of the bilateral cochlear implant programme and the expansion of that in Beaumont Hospital. That is a very positive step and it will have a transformative effect of the lives of a number of people.

My motion was very short, concise and to the point. I was accused by several Deputies on the other side of the House of frightening people or of scaremongering. In my view, this four-line motion could not scare anyone. It is much more frightening to see people standing outside hospitals with placards saying that people will die if certain services are removed. That would scare people. There is a lack of credibility on the other side of the House regarding many health issues because of the Government's attempts to row back on many of the commitments that were made before the last general election.

Reference has been made to the politicisation of the health service. I would like to think the HSE was set up as part of an effort to depoliticise the health service. The general purpose of the establishment of the HSE was to allow public representatives to engage in a constructive debate on broad policy, with the implementation of that policy being done by the HSE at one remove from the political establishment. That was the reasoning behind it. We realised we were unable to ensure that health services in certain areas would provided on the basis of need, as opposed to being provided on the basis of forms of interference from the political process, such as the lobbying that used to be done by Ministers, Governments and the old health boards. That was the reasoning behind it. The rationale was that a single organisation should be overseeing the delivery of health care throughout the country.

I assure those who have suggested that my motion has been tabled to grab headlines or seek attention that I could find many more imaginative ways of seeking attention. I am doing my duty by standing in this Chamber to highlight the issues that concern the public in a calm and rational way. I believe the contributions to the debate from Deputies on this side of the House, like the motion itself, have generally been fair and reasonable in their observations. I agree that everybody must come up with solutions. If one is to identify a solution, one must first identify that there is a problem. There are many problems in the health service. My motion came about because of what we are experiencing on a daily basis and what is being said by those who are directly responsible for the delivery of health care in this country. The major problems in our health services are being highlighted on a daily basis by the director general of the HSE, Mr. O'Brien, and by senior clinicians, consultants, medical professionals and front-line service providers in all areas of the HSE. Those who are professionally involved in health service delivery are making it clear that patient safety is being put at risk.

While I do not wish to be alarmist, I would be failing in my duty if I failed to highlight the facts which are being outlined by organisations that represent people who have a central role in the delivery of health care, including the Irish Emergency Medicine Trainees Association, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation and the Health Information and Quality Authority. Other groups, including those representing consultants, hospital management and front-line service providers, are stating that there are issues of concern. I would be failing in my duty if I were to sit here quietly and say nothing. That is why we used our Private Members' time to highlight the deficiencies in the HSE service plan. I think the removal from the schedule of this Parliament of a six-hour debate that was planned for this week was a very cheap shot. It stymied Deputies on all sides of the House who wanted an opportunity to express their views on the HSE service plan. Approximately €13 billion is to be spent under the plan, which makes it the second biggest tranche of State expenditure every year, after the expenditure of the Department of Social Protection. That is why we tabled this motion.

Last night, the Minister, Deputy Reilly, announced with great fanfare his major achievement of reducing the number of people on the waiting list for outpatient appointments from over 100,000 to approximately 4,500. I know that is a public relations stunt, as by any stretch of the imagination it involves a complete massaging of the figures. We will expand on that in the next few days as the drip-drip of information from the Department continues. When we analyse the figures in detail, we will realise that "all that glistens is not gold" in the context of the pronouncements we heard from the Minister, Deputy Reilly, yesterday. We know for certain there is a bulge in the figures as they relate to people who have been waiting list for outpatient appointments for less than 12 months, and particularly those who have been waiting for between six and nine months.

The Minister did not point out that many of those who were on the list when more than 100,000 people were waiting for outpatient appointments might never have presented. They were never going to go in the first place, even if a genuine referral had been made on their behalf some time previously. We all know that the list which is being used as a benchmark could have been whittled down. Many of the 100,000 people on the list were there in name only. Having said that, I welcome the fact that individual people - I am not talking about the broad generics of a list - who have been on the list for over a year will see consultants within a reasonable space of time. The major problem is that a significant number of people have been waiting to see a consultant for less than 12 months, but will have to wait for close to 12 months before they see that consultant. That is happening across the health service in the context of outpatient appointments. As I have said, I will comment further on this aspect of the matter when the Minister, Deputy Reilly, announces the figures in more detail at some future time.

The Government's spin is evident in its amendment to my motion, which states that the Minister "notes, in particular, the progress that has been made in reducing the waiting times for patients on trolleys in emergency departments, with a reduction of 8,814 in the year to 27 December 2013, down 34% from 2011". One would normally expect a year-on-year comparison to be included with such a statistic. The amendment should have mentioned that the 2013 figure was 2% higher than the 2012 figure. That is what the Minister should have said, but instead he decided to pick out a figure from which it could be extrapolated that there had been some kind of major achievement. The harsh reality is that the number of people on trolleys last year was 2% higher than the number of people on trolleys the previous year. There is no point in denying the statistical fact that it is going in the wrong direction. We should also note that behind the statistic in the amendment is that fact that some 410 people were on trolleys in this country's hospitals yesterday. That is an indication of the major difficulties that exist and are being highlighted on a continual basis by clinicians and other professionals who work at the coalface in accident and emergency departments throughout this country. They are saying consistently that this is an issue.

When we talk about the HSE plan, we are talking about the investment of public funding in the provision of health care in this country. In that context, I want to draw the Minister of State's attention to the issue of private health insurance, which equally funds the public health system through the various charges that are levied as part of the system of full cost recoup for private patients in public beds. The cost of private health insurance is escalating. My attention has been brought to a statement of claim from Laya Healthcare regarding treatment provided at the Mater Private Hospital from 9 September 2013 to 10 September 2013. The statement makes it clear that the patient in question was in semi-private accommodation in the hospital for one night, and that the amount of claim was €17,280.75.

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