Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Minister’s speech was informative and interesting, first and foremost because of some of the statistics outlined in it. The one figure from last year which jumped out was that admissions to emergency departments grew by 9%. While I do not have the figure off the top of my head as to what our population increase was last year, it was nowhere near even 7%. What does that say about the health of our society?

From a Green Party perspective, the first measure on which we have to concentrate when managing our emergency departments, hospital waiting lists and health service is preventing illness in the first place. We need to create a healthier environment for all our people which would see us, setting as our first task in tackling the undoubted crisis we have, reducing the number of the people having to go to hospital.

That requires us changing. It requires the Minister with responsibility for food to stop supporting at every stage processed foods that are high in sugar, fat and salt, which is good for the profits of the food processing companies but bad for the hearts and heads of the people of this country. It requires the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to take what is a €100 million investment out of a multi-billion euro transport investment budget to promote the forms of transport that makes us healthier, such as walking and cycling, and to start to increase that as part of our response to the health crisis. It requires the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and others to start designing communities where it will be safe to move in that way so that we start to create a healthy society. That is the first key point. Prevention is better than cure, and we must start that.

Second, regarding the statistics in the Minister's contribution, I will not cite all of them but he cited the putting in place of 343 community intervention teams. He also cited the employment of 800 additional nurses and several hundred additional doctors. He said in a range of areas there were 1,600 new nursing home support scheme places, and so on. The massive increase in investment we have seen through emergency budget provisions in recent years was cited but, as Deputy Coppinger stated, the outcome, despite all those increases in expenditure, still saw an approximate 5% to 6% increase in the number of people ending up on hospital trolleys. We are all aware of that because we all have friends and family members who have ended up in that position. The Minister's contribution was interesting and highlighted a range of public service money we are spending resulting in additional nurses, additional places and additional beds but we are not solving the problem. The fundamental question is not only the amount of additional money we can raise and can keep putting in but how we can start making sure we get value for money and ensure those nurses starting off in their career and those beds are being used in an efficient way, which means we will not see another year-on-year increase in the number of people on trolleys.

I will outline some thoughts on that from the Green Party's health policy, which the Minister or whoever will be the Minister in the upcoming Government might take into account. To start with emergency medicine, we believe we need to strengthen the paramedic service because as first responders they have a critical role. Upskilling them and giving them a real role in managing the emergency process right into the hospital is the right investment for us to make. Apologies for that mobile interference.

See this speech in context