Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I had the privilege of representing workers in our health service for many years. I stood with them as the services they advocate so passionately for were dismantled. This project was started by Fianna Fáil with the recruitment moratorium, among other measures, and taken up fairly enthusiastically by those in Fine Gael and the Labour Party. I have had to support health workers as they tried to highlight the impact of Government policy on their services and on those who depend on those services. I have defended those same workers when their employers threatened sanctions against them for the very act of speaking up and speaking out.

The acting Minister for Health would do well to listen to those people who are carrying the can for the failure by his Government under his watch. There is no point in saying it was like that when he got there because the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, was put there to make a difference. He and his predecessor have presided over unprecedented increases in the number of people waiting on trolleys. That is, of course, after he stopped arguing with the nurses who are counting the trolley waits. I wonder if the acting Minister has ever waited with an elderly relative who had to suffer the indignity of a long trolley wait. Has he ever had to calm down a home help worker after he or she has been told the hours have been cut. These workers need the money and the work but, more important, their clients need the home help hours. I wonder if the acting Minister has seen the human impact of Government actions and, more important, inaction because I think if he did he would spend less time fighting those who deliver health services and contradicting them when they highlight the problems and try to advocate for their patients.

I represent the constituency of Dublin Fingal. On the Monday after the Minister and I were elected, there were 27 patients awaiting admission to Beaumont Hospital, 17 in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital and 14 in Connolly Hospital Blanchardstown. The people I represent have to choose between these hospitals because, despite the fact that this is the biggest constituency in Dublin, they have no hospital. In the intervening time, while those in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been jockeying for position in front of every passing microphone and the members of the acting Government have all been in receipt of wages, the number of patients on trolleys awaiting admission or inappropriately placed on wards has risen by 35% in the three hospitals.

We learn from leaks to newspapers that the Minister will be raiding the mental health budget yet again. Ten years on from the launch of A Vision for Change, we see psychiatric nurses forced to highlight the failure of the services to deliver for patients. They recently published a survey, carried out in conjunction with the Psychiatric Nurses Association of Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, which shines a light on what is really happening in our mental health services. They say that, among other things, there are no multidisciplinary manpower plans in place, limited access to day services and a lack of assertive outreach.

I am shocked that anyone needs to be reminded of the need to ring-fence funding for mental health services, but apparently this is necessary so I will say it here today. We need to ring-fence funding for mental health services.

We can only make statements here today, but the Minister can take action. He can stop the ludicrous spend on agency staff, which totalled €250 million last year. He can intervene to ensure public money is not spent where workers' rights are disregarded, such as the case of the 999 workers who are currently engaged in a dispute in Navan. If the Minister so chooses, he can publish the capacity review for our ambulance services. Even now, much can be done to alleviate the impact the two-tier health service is having on people.

The Minister and Ministers of State are still being paid to run our health service. I call on the Minister and his good friends in the Labour Party, who may have lost their seats but, curiously, have not lost their jobs, to take immediate action to make our health service a place where the brightest and best of our young people want to work and where those who are desperately in need of care and treatment can feel safe and know that they will be treated in a decent environment.

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