Derek Nolan (Galway West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am particularly delighted to be able to speak on this very important motion. I thank the Opposition parties for tabling it because we should be debating our health services and discussing the real concerns that people bring to our attention at our clinics and on the doorstep, as well as the every day experiences of our family members, friends and people we know in the community. When we talk about the health service, those of us on the Government side should not speak with bombast or vitriol or with any kind of holier than thou attitude. It is our job - particularly those of us supporting the Government - to be realistic and not to engage in cynical tactics. However, that is not to say that the Opposition has not got a case to answer for the wreck that it left the place in. That is not for me to point out; that is for the public to draw their own conclusions on.

I must say, as someone who is a representative of a constituency which has a number of people who will be on trolleys tonight, that the public health service that we have at the moment simply is not up to scratch. That is not a condemnation of those who are working particularly hard, including the Minister, to try to improve the service and make it better. It is simply an acknowledgement that the system we currently have and which we inherited is a mixture of public and private patients going through a hospital system that does not know whether it is public or private, that does not know who its ultimate master is or whether it has political, governmental, clinician or consultant leadership and which is not going in a direction which it ought to follow. However, we see that change is happening, for example, in my own area with the Saolta hospital group. We see that there is finally a sense of purpose in terms of what hospitals should be doing, what components of hospitals should be doing, what particular hospitals in a network should be doing and how we can better use our valuable and scare resources to provide a better service. That said, those lofty goals and good words mean very little to someone who is in the emergency department in Galway University Hospital today. That is a place I know only too well, having been there a number of months ago with my father who spent a night on a trolley. While there I watched the staff in the emergency department doing trojan work. They were literally running from patient to patient in the emergency department and were working in extremely difficult circumstances. They worked to the best of their ability and tried to provide as much dignity, care and courtesy to the patients under their care as possible. The staff must be given recognition for the work they are doing in all areas of the hospital network and in our health service generally.

It is for those of us in government to provide leadership and to provide a path out of the current mire and the current difficulties. Simply continuing to do as we always have done in the health service is not going to bring us to a position where things will change. I must commend this Government on promoting the idea that the hospital system cannot be the be-all and end-all of our health services. A hospital should be the place to which a patient goes as a last resort. We have introduced, in the face of staunch opposition from those on the opposition benches, universal GP care for children under six and people over 70, with the express intention of expanding that to include everybody, so that people never have to worry about having €50 to see a GP. That should never be a worry for people in this day and age. We are moving towards a new model of care.

We must resource doctors properly in order that they can do many of the things currently done by the hospital system at emergency level. We must resource primary care centres to ensure they have equipment that ensures people avoid having to present in emergency departments or avail of hospital services. According to the old adage, the purpose of medicine is to prevent rather than cure.

I could not let the moment go without acknowledging that the Minister has visited University Hospital Galway and spoken at length to staff, including consultants and managers. I commend him on taking the time to visit the emergency department and I am aware that he spent a good deal of time in the unit and it made an impression on him. I have also asked the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, to visit the hospital's emergency department, speak to management and observe the difficulties in the unit. The department is completely out of date, as the Minister is aware, and does not comply with Health Service Executive safety requirements. In addition, it does not offer patients dignity or meet the various requirements that emergency departments are obliged to meet.

I understand the capital plan for the health service will be published in the coming weeks and months. I plan to tell every Minister and Government party Deputy I meet that it is crucial that a new emergency department for University Hospital Galway is included in the capital plan. The existing run-down and broken facility must be replaced in order that patients, staff and everyone else who comes into contact with the department are treated with the dignity they deserve as citizens, patients and human beings.

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