Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In a democracy, there should be dialogue between the policy decision makers and the people regarding the level of public services the population needs and wants and the extent to which the population is prepared to pay through taxation for those public services, including access to good education, access to safe warm homes, adequate income to raise a family and access to quality health care when needed. Since the beginning of austerity, our health services have been subject to death by a thousand cuts. I do not envy the Minister his job in trying to resurrect the health services again, which is what this is about. If the maxim of the hippocratic oath is to first do no harm, it is certainly not the maxim of our current political or governance systems. This is disappointing because following the 2011 election, we were promised there would be a democratic revolution, that things would be done differently and that there would be a caring Ireland in which the Government would do its utmost to ensure the well-being of its citizens. However, a different reality has emerged since 2011 and the Fine Gael and Labour parties have ensured that our health service has been downgraded.

Between 2008 and 2014, some €4 billion was cut from the service. It is an extraordinary amount of money. There are 12,000 fewer staff in the HSE compared to 2007. There are fewer people to care for the old, the young and the vulnerable. There are fewer people to deal with life-threatening illnesses and fewer to deal with those who have been in accidents. Since 2010, some 5,200 nursing posts have been cut. How can hospitals prepare to provide care for patients with cut after cut after cut? It is unfair on the excellent staff in our hospitals to expect them to cope. It is little wonder that morale is a big problem in our hospitals. Others have spoken about the situation of ill patients being placed on trolleys for days before being given a bed on a ward. They spoke of emergency departments where patients cannot be moved on because beds are not available. There are totally inadequate community services. How many people are in hospital who could be in the community if we had adequate community services?

I will be parochial for the minute I have left. Sligo Regional Hospital has an excellent emergency department with excellent staff but the numbers on trolleys are creeping up and up. God help us when the flu hits. There are 400,000 people on outpatients waiting lists. It is wrong and the Minister knows it is wrong that people should have to wait for up to four years to get a diagnosis let alone begin a course of treatment. The Minister is a straight thinker and a straight talker. I believe he would not deliberately mislead the Dáil or the people. It was not so in the run up to the 2011 election. The candidates for the Fine Gael and Labour parties promised the people of Sligo, Leitrim, south Donegal and west Cavan that breast cancer services would be restored to Sligo General Hospital as it was then called. That promise was broken. They promised that mammography would not be taken from Sligo General Hospital but that promise was broken and mammography was taken from it. Now, Sligo Regional Hospital needs a cath lab if the people in the constituency I represent are to have the same right to health as the people south of the Dublin-Galway line. That does not seem to be happening at this point in time. That needs to happen for the people I represent.

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