Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Government promised to create a single-tier health service, guaranteeing access to medical care based on need, not income. They were very big promises. Five years on, the hope it gave to hundreds of thousands of families has been cruelly dashed. Not only is the two-tier health system still in place, but the Government has, in fact, also made it worse, with 4,000 fewer nurses, 68,000 waiting for inpatient treatment and 400,000 for outpatient appointments.

As if all of this was not enough, the Government has now imposed a service plan on the HSE that is €150 million short of what it requires. Mr. Tony O'Brien, the man it put in charge of the HSE, has told the Government that the health service has been starved of resources since 2011. Other senior medics have warned openly that the lack of funding for 2016 will hurt patient care. Given the scale of the failure to reform the health system in the past five years and given the hardship and suffering the Government's decisions have imposed on families right across the State, will it now apologise for that failure? Will it now admit it has no plan or vision for the health care system? Will it finally commit to providing the level of funding and staffing required to provide people with the health care they so urgently need?

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