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

I might take a little more time because we only have two Deputies who will be speaking, so I have 20 minutes left. They are quite happy with five minutes each.

That is something the Minister has to do. I cannot accept that he can walk out of the Chamber again this year and pretend, as we face into a general election, that he has another realistic budget when I know and everyone else will know and deep down he will also know, that unless he gets adequate resources that will target specific areas we will be in the same position next August-September of 2016, with a huge hole in the budget and the Government scrapping around, cutting services and managing panic to try to keep hospitals in budget.

I would like the Minister to think through the idea of fining hospitals again because he will force hospitals to make choices about who they treat. If their budgets are not adequate and if they do not have the capacity to deal with all those who present themselves in hospitals, they will be making choices and there will be a continual cancelling of people who are scheduled for elective surgeries. The figures are a damning indictment not just of the health services but, more importantly, of the person who is responsible for funding them, namely, the Minister.

I referred to the National Treatment Purchase Fund. The Government must bring it back in a proper capacity, rather than slinking out from time to time to massage the figures downward, purchasing from the private healthcare sector. Why not do it properly? Establish it, put it up and running, and disband the special delivery unit and the former Minister's Gestapo team, which is heading around the country, pretending it is doing things, when the reality is that all it has been doing was observing the carnage and chaos in our emergency departments because of inadequate funding, not only in the context of our emergency areas but throughout the hospital system and into the step-down facilities and the fair deal nursing home areas.

The Minister has spoken a few times about funding public health services and the need to put money into our public services in general versus tax cuts. I hope he is true to his promise. Choices will be made. Fine Gael will be off with its focus groups doing its research, doing its surveys and finding out what resonates with certain sectors of the electorate, but at some stage it will have to be honest with the people. The issue of underfunded public services is having a devastating impact on people. It would ill-behove anybody in this House to stand up here and applaud the Minister for Finance in a few weeks' time and shout to the high heavens that this is a great budget. If we are going to fund tax cuts to certain sections by leaving a child waiting an inordinate length of time for a speech and language assessment, to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and leave an elderly woman lying for three days on a trolley or leave elderly people in a home without proper homecare packages and cut home help hours, the Government should at least be honest and say it publicly, rather than putting a grand spin on it, that everybody will be looked after in the budget. The Government will make choices and the choices to date have affected the vulnerable, the old and the sick in our society. It is not just an Opposition Deputy standing up and highlighting that, it is a fact. The budgets to date have been regressive and they have attacked those who most need State support.

When the members of the Government are all applauding the tax cuts but somebody else telephones to say they cannot get their mother into a hospital, they cannot get their child an assessment with a speech and language therapist, or cannot even find a speech and language therapist in some places, or that their 13 year old daughter cannot see an orthodontist for months or years, it is because the Government has made choices. It made those choices knowing full well that many areas of society do need public services. They depend on public services and public services depend on a Government that is willing to support them. What I have seen today in terms of the Government's decisions on cuts and on taxes tells me that it is more interested in focus groups and the results of focus groups, or what the electorate likes to hear and what groups will or will not vote for it. I find abhorrent the idea that it will fund its vote-buying budget by letting people wait day after day on trolleys, by not funding proper health services, by leaving people waiting an inordinate length of time to access the fair deal scheme and where people are walking around in pain waiting for hip and knee replacements. I am sure that if the Government wants to face the electorate in an honest and meaningful way, at least it will fight for a better health service, something that we all demand but, more importantly, that many people need.

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