Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When one analyses the full import of the Government's policies in the past five years it has been very scatter-gun. There has been no cohesive strategy whatsoever. We spoke earlier about universal health insurance, free GP access for everybody and the abandonment of the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, in favour of the special delivery unit. We now find that we are using private capacity to deal with elective and scheduled surgery. What was the logic in getting rid of the National Treatment Purchase Fund in the first place and for us then to be back out in the market trying to secure operations privately? The bottom line is that the Minister must accept he cannot consistently use the cancellation of elective surgery to deal with overcrowding in emergency departments. That is consistently storing up difficulties for the system and, equally it is simply not good enough for all those individuals who are waiting an inordinate period for their elective surgery only to find they are cancelled at short notice.

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