Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The bottom line is that discretionary medical cards were taken from very sick children because the figures were falsified at the time. We were given a phrase along the lines of "probity controls" and nobody knew what it meant. To be fair to the Minister at the time, Deputy Reilly, he said he could not stand over the figures the day after the budget was announced. The Economic Management Council and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform stood over them. What happened? When we went forward seven or eight months, it transpired that those figures were never going to be anywhere near meeting the need. That caused chaos and distress for many families, and the same has happened over the past 12 months. There has been much distress caused to front-line workers in the health area because they were told to operate within a budget.

Late one night, a white paper or a Supplementary Estimate was produced, releasing an extra €1.5 billion, and the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council was not even told about it. There was much hype on a day when €1.5 billion was given out, involving presentations and media handlers, but in the previous four or five days, another €1.5 billion was given out and there was not a word about it in that we cannot get information about it. We had to go searching for that information about what it is for and what Departments would be affected. Over the past three years, the Government's handling of the fiscal position in health has been disgraceful. I am very clear that it has been dishonest, in my view, as the Government wanted to get its figures right on the tax front. It was a certain political operation for the budgets for the past three years and health was getting in the way. These were never real figures for the health sector.

That has been going on and there is a need for a very honest debate about our health services, particularly about what they need. The HSE has not got the required level of funding to perform the level of services that the Government wanted it to perform over the past three years. Nobody can dispute that reality, as there has been a chronic mismatch between the level of services that people want and which the Government has ordained should happen against the resources put to that end. Despite meeting 15 times, the Economic Management Council has allowed chaos to reign in health, as well as in housing and homeless policy.

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