Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Finian McGrath for sharing time with me. Over the past eight years, something like €4 billion, 2,000 beds and two million home help hours have been taken out of the public health system. That simply must stop. Reinvestment in the system is urgently required. We need a public health system that is based on medical need, that does away with the two-tier system and that ensures that anyone in medical need can have access to health services.

I will briefly refer to three matters that exercise all those who use or work in the health service. The first relates to carers and the directive issued by the HSE about the reduction in home care packages and home help hours. This has shocked and angered the public, and particularly family carers, who give hugely of their time to ensure that family members in most cases are looked after properly in their own homes and communities. They are saving the State millions on an annual basis. I ask the Minister to instruct the HSE to withdraw that directive and make available increased home help hours with the aim of restoring the 2 million home help hours that have been lost over the past number of years. It is a win-win situation in terms of Government expenditure because it is far less costly to look after someone at home, supported by a family carer, than to have that person in a public hospital bed, regardless of whether it is an acute or a long-stay bed, or in a nursing home.

I also wish to mention the suggestion last week that €12 million out of the €35 million earmarked for mental health services is being redirected. Mental health services have always been the Cinderella of the health service. Far from reducing funding for these services, it needs to be urgently increased, particularly to ensure that community-based teams are properly staffed in accordance with A Vision for Change.

I appeal to the Minister to immediately agree to the reopening of what is effectively a new 40-bed unit at Our Lady's Hospital, Cashel, to relieve the crisis at South Tipperary General Hospital. When I spoke here during the nominations for An Taoiseach on the first day of the new Dáil, there were 44 trolleys in the wards and foyer of that hospital, the highest number in the country on that day.

On the second day that the Dáil met, there were 38 beds on the corridors. There has been major pressure on the hospital which is working at 130% capacity. The 79 medical beds are operating at 150% capacity. The hospital urgently requires additional beds and step-down beds. It is a scandal that when there is such pressure on the hospital and so many people are on trolleys that there should be a vacant unit at Our Lady’s Hospital, Cashel, that is ready to go, fully revamped and refurbished. It is effectively a new building that is available and would address the current problems at South Tipperary General Hospital arising from the huge pressure and the large increase in attendance there.

See this speech in context