Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I support the motion.

The one sentence that I ultimately agree with in the motion is that the Dáil calls on the Government to "fund the health services adequately and honestly" because something I believe we have not seen in the State in the past 30 years is adequate and honest funding for the health services.

The reality is that the health services have never recovered from the Mac the Knife cuts in the 1980s when over 3,000 beds were taken out of the health services and by the time we came around to the current crisis in 2010, they still had not recovered from that. Over this crisis, we have seen another 1,600 beds taken out of the health services. This will continue. I do not think, by the time we hit our next crisis, probably in five or six years' time, that the health services will have recovered at any level either.

The Minister for Finance yesterday was being quoted in the newspapers as saying that it was crazy for the HSE to be looking for an extra €1.9 billion to fund the health services into the future, but the reality is that the Government uses the waiting lists in the health services in order to ration the service and to keep costs down. If one wants an efficient health service it has to treat more patients and in order to treat more patients it must cost more, and that's the problem the Government has and that it is not willing to accept. If we want to provide for the patients on the waiting lists, we must invest more money in the health services. No doubt that is what will happen. I believe that more than €2 billion is needed to make the health services work and that will never be seen under this Government or any future right-wing Government in this State that I can envisage.

What we always have then is citizens waiting for years to get an appointment to see a consultant so that they can get onto the waiting list to wait to get a procedure, and citizens then getting letters offering them an appointment with a consultant in 18 months or two years. That is the reality of the situation. Unless the Government gets its act together and invests in the health services, that will never change.

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