Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Over the past three and a half years the Government has been at pains to spin that the health service was being reformed and transformed. Figures produced this week show that nothing could be further from the truth. In fairness to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, since being appointed to the job he has spoken the truth only to be slapped down by the Taoiseach who seems ignorant of the truth.

A few months ago the Taoiseach told us that Fine Gael had tackled waiting lists. He told the Fine Gael Ard-Fheis that the problem was resolved. However, the evidence is very different. The number of patients waiting more than nine months for inpatient or day-case treatment has risen by 1,000% in July. There are now 5,448 people waiting more than nine months for a day-case treatment. There has been a fivefold increase in the number of patients waiting more than a year for inpatient and day-case treatment at Beaumont and there are significant backlogs at the Mater, in Galway, in Cork and at St James's.

In 2011 the Taoiseach said, "My Government is keenly aware of the stress that waiting for treatment causes to the citizens of our country and in response to this the Minister for Health has instructed public hospitals to ensure that by the end of 2011 they have no patients waiting more than 12 months for treatment". Today there are 20,928 patients waiting more than 12 months for treatment. Those are the real figures. They show the extent of the Government's misleading of people and inability to manage the difficulties of our health service. The Government was warned about that and yet it introduced a flawed health budget that took €200 million from hospitals. The cause of these delays was a flawed service plan and now we have the proof.

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