Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is now falling into the same viewer trap Fianna Fáil did over the weekend, that is, to assume 2011 was year zero and we did not have a complete and absolute economic collapse. Trying to restore the public finances has been the most demanding focus of Government for the past five years. One cannot pretend we had resources available to deploy as we wished. We had to reduce expenditure over that time. We protected health and health numbers as best we could throughout that process and that is self-evident. I do not believe either that every issue in the health service is to be met by more cash. For example, under the Haddington Road agreement, we deployed an additional 5 million hours from all levels of staff - from porters to consultant hospital doctors - to deliver better services.

While everybody, understandably, focuses on health failures, there is an enormous success story also from the majority of those who interact with the health service regarding the fine work done by doctors, nurses, porters and health workers.

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