Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There have been very serious revelations in The Irish Timestoday on the dysfunctionality and disconnect in the management of our health services. I note in particular the correspondence between the CEO of the HSE and the Secretary General of the Department of Health who, no doubt, was doing the bidding of the Minister for Health. The correspondence was on the HSE CEO's attempts to fill 253 vacant consultant posts nationally. It is now the case that 12% of consultant posts are vacant, which is causing a real crisis in the delivery of services to our people. The CEO was seeking a restoration of what was cut in 2012. The correspondence reveals that the figures produced in the budget to cut health by €600 million were never real. The HSE is at pains to point out in the correspondence that it never signed on for these figures or for Haddington Road notwithstanding that people claimed publicly that it did. It was then expected to deliver on the figures.

We had further revelations in the article in the The Irish Timesby Professor Donal O'Shea on last week's decision to stop surgery for obesity in St. Vincent's University Hospital and the dysfunctionality the decision involved. The decision will cost lives. These are people who are extremely obese and need the surgery which has been stopped. Professor O'Shea wrote aptly that leadership is absent and chaos reigns. Last week, we had the revelations on the community mental health service where patients are dying in the care of the HSE itself. We had stark revelations on the programme "This Week" on Sunday.

The foregoing reveals without any doubt that morale is extremely low within the health service. There is a complete absence of coherent management within the service and frontline services and the safety of patients are at risk, particularly in the context of the vacancies across the country in so many consultant posts. Does the Taoiseach accept that the figures produced in this year's budget were false and bore no relation to the reality of what could be achieved by the HSE? Does he still have confidence in the capacity of the Minister for Health, Deputy James Reilly, to manage our health services?

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