Dáil debates

Wednesday, 20 April 2016

2:30 pm

Photo of Thomas ByrneThomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am tempted to call a quorum in light of the absence of Sinn Féin Deputies from the Chamber, but I will desist for the moment as we are only starting here today. It is a bit surprising because I know if we were not here today, they would certainly make an issue of it.

This debate is very important. As other Deputies have done with regard to their constituencies, I wish to thank the voters in Meath East who elected me to the Dáil to represent them. They want me to champion a range of services in Meath that we depend on, including Our Lady's Hospital in Navan, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, Cavan General Hospital and, indeed, the Dublin hospital service.

We are concerned with protecting all the services that are there to ensure the better health of the people. However, it is not acceptable for me or any other Deputy to come into this Chamber and go back 12 years to a Minister for Health who has long since departed the scene, to go back six or seven years to a previous Government or to even refer back to the last Government to start laying blame for what has happened. That seems to be the tone of much of the commentary from Sinn Féin and the Independents on the issue. Unfortunately, that is all we are getting in this debate, apart from everybody championing their local situation, which, of course, is very important. Fine Gael Deputies seem content to blame the last Government but one and then claim that the last Government delivered and made matters better. Clearly, it did not do so.

If a minority Government comes into being - judging by what the media are reporting right now, that seems a less-than-likely scenario - it will be obliged to realise that it will represent only a minority of the membership of this Chamber. It certainly will not have the monopoly of wisdom on the health services - nor will the Department of Health - and it will not have a monopoly on power either. The converse is also true. In the scenario to which I refer, Opposition Deputies will have a huge amount of power and influence. The Minister and his officials will also need to recognise that. It will not be good enough for us to come into this Chamber and engage in broad attacks on those in government. It will be our role, in collaboration and partnership with the Government, to set the budget, to outline our priorities for what we want to do and to achieve some level of collaboration and agreement.

There are issues in respect of which, quite rightly, there can be criticism and castigation. I refer, for example, to the decision to move in respect of the ring-fenced funding relating to mental health. Deputy Munster mentioned SOSAD, a very important organisation across Ireland that originated in Drogheda in the north east. It is considering closing down because it does not receive Government funding. It could have been one of the organisations that could well have benefited from this money, which has been taken from mental health services.

These decisions need to be taken by all Members in this House. I look forward to engaging with officials from the Department. The latter will have to get used to engaging more frequently with Opposition Deputies in the new scenario because the Minister will effectively be executing the will of the Dáil - which might not necessarily be the will of the Government - and the Government will need to realise that. The Fine Gael Party in particular has been slow to realise that.

A number of things could be done very quickly. Deputy Connolly, on ideological grounds, was very quick to criticise the National Treatment Purchase Fund simply because it involves a private sector element. However, I am certain her constituents do not care how an operation is paid for. These operations all have to be paid for irrespective of whether they are performed by people in the public or private sectors. The waiting lists for operations for hip replacements, etc., have increased dramatically since the National Treatment Purchase Fund was abolished. It was not abolished due to a lack of funding but because the Government wanted to abolish it and bring in the special delivery unit, which has been a gross failure.

There is spare capacity in the private sector. It would be unconscionable if we were to sit here and criticise the private sector without proposing to utilise the private sector while, of course, getting the best price for it. Let us provide relief to some of these people, particularly older people, who are in severe pain by ensuring their operations are carried out. It is heart breaking to talk to an older person in severe pain because of the need for a hip or knee replacement while people in this Chamber are saying that a solution that exists cannot be pursued for ideological reasons. To some extent, the previous Government brought it back towards the end of its term because it saw it was practical and could work. I certainly know of people who were getting operations paid for in the private sector. It needs to be brought back and people valued the guarantee to get an operation done within a certain period of time that was there with previous Governments. I urge the Minister and the Dáil to look at this scheme again. Those Independents who see themselves as left wingers should leave the ideology behind, particularly if we can have operations performed and allow people to have their pain removed on a lasting basis.

It is opportune to let the Government know that the broad consensus in Dáil Éireann - this has come from Fine Gael Deputies as well - is that we have a public health service. We should not deliberately move to privatise elements that it is not necessary to privatise. We have seen this across a range of health services. I am concerned about moves within the HSE to transfer some of the administrators into the private sector into what, inevitably, will be lower-paid jobs. There seems to be a move afoot to get rid of some of the payroll services from the HSE. Some of these have already gone out to the private sector. Staff who provide such services are quite worried about their positions.

The provision of home help services has been completely privatised, though not because of a shortage of home helps. While in the case of the National Treatment Purchase Fund there was a shortage of capacity to do operations and, therefore, we went to the private sector, in this instance it seems to have been an ideological decision to get home helps on a cheaper basis, which is not acceptable. If that is the way the health service is going, we are well on the way to a shabby service and it cannot continue like that. The Dáil must - I believe does - support a public health service that is free at the point of delivery and by means of which people can be satisfied that what they need in terms of health care will be achieved and their right to that care - because health care is a right - will be upheld. Bunreacht na hÉireann confers the right to free primary education. As a medium-term project, we should look at the possibility of the right to health care. It has to happen. We do not have that right. We have a Health Act that depends effectively on the funding that is allocated each year. That is a matter I would like to examine.

The reality is that there are many problems. All previous speakers have mentioned their local hospitals. I think the hospital in Navan is clear at present in terms of people on trolleys. However, it is a small facility. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, of course, has 22 people on trolleys and, inevitably, there are some real horror stories among those patients who have to wait.

As I said, we must come together to collaborate. However, the latter does not mean that Ministers will not be held to account in this Chamber with regard to the individual decisions they make. The recent decision to take moneys from mental health services was a politically expedient move which went against major policy announcements made by the previous Government, the Minister of State, Kathleen Lynch, and others. This is not acceptable. Lives will be lost. It sends out a message that once the brouhaha in respect of important issues such as suicide and mental health in general dies down, the Government is willing to turn the other way. That is not acceptable. We must continue to prioritise this area. We are hardly prioritising it by allocating a relatively small amount. There are other priorities in the health service. However, even that amount of money needs to be kept and delivered upon to provide effective services for people who need them in the field of mental health and to show that it is not the poor relation in the health service. It must be shown that it is recognised as an illness that can, in many cases, be treated and that the stigma associated with it for so long is gone. Unfortunately, this type of decision will only worsen that stigma and make the health of the people involved suffer enormously.

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