Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has an unwillingness to deal with the reality of the situation, unlike his great leader who wants to let Paddy know. The Minister is failing to inform himself on the scale of the situation. I know the Minister is a decent person, and if he has the information we have he must find it very difficult to put his head on the pillow at night. People are being discharged from hospital early and wards are being closed as a consequence of budgetary restrictions. The Minister is precipitating the accelerated discharge of vulnerable and sick people who do not know their rights. They find themselves in a broken care pattern, where their children have emigrated as a consequence of our austerity and the Minister has slashed home helps and broken the carer's arrangement, but he denies the problem.

In July the Department advised the Minister's friend, the previous Minister for Health. On Tuesday I told the Minister he had shifted the blame for this mess to the previous Minister. The Minister was advised about the budgetary shortfall but has done nothing. This is his legacy so far. The Minister for Health's legacy for this month is to have spoken 30 times on Irish Water, but he has done nothing for senior citizens and their domestic circumstances. He can smirk at me and lie behind this ideology, where somebody must pay €1,000 a week because of a deliberate administrative strategy. I have somebody in the Department, who rang me to tell me what is really going on.

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