Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Taoiseach. We are not allowed to discuss the business of the committee, but I am concerned with getting a handle on how it does its work and holds the Government to account. The Government's position on health, or at least what was outlined to us, was that we would see free GP care for all, an end to prescription charges, universal health insurance, abolition of the Health Service Executive, an end to trolley waits and an end to two-tier waiting lists. There were more details given but those are the highlights of the Government's health policy. One presumes the Cabinet committee on health meets to deal with all of these matters. Surely, in the course of its deliberations, it would have discussed the fact we have not seen free GP care for all, an end to prescription charges, universal health insurance, abolition of the HSE or an end to trolley waits. In fact, in November, the month in which the committee last met, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation revealed there was a 4% increase in the numbers on trolleys, the figure being 7,407 admitted patients, and a 24% year-on-year increase, the total figure being 87,000 admitted patients.

That is a Croke Park full of citizens on trolleys. Of 29 emergency departments, 25 have increased overcrowding. Today, there are 401 citizens on trolleys, 27 of them in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in my own constituency. We also have 2,000 fewer nurses. The Minister is making public statements, which include, for example, the proposal that hospital groups should be able to conduct business in the manner of semi-State companies, outside the constraints of public service rules. He also says he is going to scrap the universal health insurance plan because it could not work and it never could have worked. This Government has created chaos in the health service because its firm ideological position is not to have a universal public health service, but to privatise it and to have a for-profit system, as revealed by the Minister, outside the constraints of public service rules.

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