Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It has reached the stage, not just in my constituency, but in all constituencies, at which people are afraid to attend accident and emergency departments. Who could blame them? The long waiting lists represent many people suffering in their homes and hanging on for long-awaited treatment, but the public face of the crisis is in the accident and emergency departments of the large hospitals. This is testament to the failed health policies of successive Governments, but it is the legacy of some outstanding failures in health over the past 20 years or so that has landed us where we are now. Ministers for Health like Brian Cowen, Micheál Martin, Mary Harney, Mary Coughlan, James Reilly and the current Minister are responsible for the cutbacks and disorganisation. They pandered to the private sector and ran down the public service that thousands of loyal, talented and hard-working front-line workers had built up over generations and that the people trusted to look after them when they were at their most vulnerable.

The worsening situation in Kerry contradicts the Minister's claim that the conditions causing the crisis in our hospitals are improving. Last week, 56 patients were lying on trolleys in Kerry General Hospital. Yesterday, 16 people found themselves in this distressing situation. Today, there are nine. These numbers are up to four times higher than they were during the same period last year. The hospital's Loher ward, which was supposed to cater for 30 patients, is being used in the short term as an oncology unit and will ultimately be used as a lab.

The reality for patients is that the crisis is only getting worse. The Minister's remarks show just how detached he is from the scale of the chaos and overcrowding that is gripping hospitals throughout the State. He is dismally failing to address the underlying causes of the crisis. Instead of doing his job, he is disgracefully attempting to lay the blame for the crisis at the feet of the heroic nurses who have worked through his slash-and-burn approach to the health service. The Minister is more focused on trying to spin himself out of responsibility rather than on actually tackling the crisis, which will only continue to worsen so long as we have health Ministers who are more focused on optics, PR lines and re-election than on running the Department of Health and prioritising patient care.

It is long past time that the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government accepted the scale of the crisis. The first step must be to engage constructively with the nurses and ensure their concerns are addressed and that we see tangible changes in our hospitals as a result. We need a Government that is prepared to invest in health and the delivery of front-line services. We need a Government that ends the two-tier system, which is something that can no longer be tolerated. People must have access to quality health care on the basis of need and not on the basis of income.

I have been dealing with a pair of cases over the past 12 months. Both patients are now dead. One was a young man with a history of attempted suicide. He was admitted to the Valentia ward of Kerry General Hospital on a Thursday evening and was released that Friday morning despite that he had been brought to the hospital by the Garda and signed in by his mother. He took his life that night. This is how much the Minister's health service failed that young man. The second patient was a woman in her late 50s who had a history of clots. She was brought to the hospital's accident and emergency department and lay there for 28 hours before it was discovered that her condition had been exacerbated. She lost her life two days later. That is testament to the health service for which this and previous Governments have been responsible. We need a health service that will do our people justice, in particular patients who are in need of care.

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