Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I join in commending Deputy Shortall on her proposal. It amused me today to see Deputy Seán Sherlock play political footsie with Deputy Shortall on the idea, given the fact that the Labour Party allowed Deputy Shortall to walk the plank in her battle with the former Minister for Health, James Reilly.

Access to health care has to be key to this new committee because it has ground to a halt over the last number of years under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Let us take for example the ambulance service. Just this week, a 75 year old person in my county had to wait 35 minutes for an ambulance to arrive to be brought to a hospital because the ambulance was in Cavan when it was needed. That is not unusual because in the period of one year, 40 people contacted me in County Meath stating that it took over an hour for an ambulance to attend to their particular crises. In seven of those cases there was a fatality involved.

Access to health care can also be seen in the difficulties of getting a bed through accident and emergency departments. Last year in the hospitals of Navan and Drogheda, 9,000 people spent time on a trolley. That is the equivalent population of Trim, in our county, who were on a trolley in the last year. We know that if one is on a trolley, one receives substandard treatment. One receives delayed treatment, which is not as good. Therefore, one has a sub-optimum health outcome. That means that some people remain injured or ill for longer and, in some cases, lose their lives. The Irish Association for Emergency Medicine stated that roughly 350 people a year lose their lives due to accident and emergency department overcrowding.

That is roughly one person a day and a startling indictment of Government health policy.

There are 490,000 people on public hospital waiting lists. That is equivalent to the population of the cities of Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford being refused access to the health service and made to languish on waiting lists. In my constituency access to the doctor on-call service is becoming more difficult and sometimes it is not available during the night. We have heard there is the possibility of a Skype doctor replacing the doctor-on-call service, with a doctor, from a distance of 50 miles, remotely diagnosing and treating a patient in crisis during the night, which is quite shocking.

A common thread of all of these stories is that there is no capacity in the system to meet demand. One would expect the capacity we have had to be maintained, but, unfortunately, that is not the policy of the Government. I am cathaoirleach of the Save Navan Hospital campaign, probably one of the most successful campaigns in the State. We have brought some 40,000 people onto the streets of County Meath in the past six years, in which time we have battled hard to ensure the emergency department will remain open. However, it is stated Government policy, in its framework for small hospitals, that it will be made into a minor injuries unit. I would love if that was not the case. I ask the new Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, who is from County Meath to publicly state it is not the case and that we will have a functioning emergency department in Navan hospital long into the future, as well as a full ICU, coronary care and anaesthesia service to back it up. I will wait for the Minister of State to make that statement.

Capacity is obviously dependent on a number of factors. It is dependent on efficiencies, better management and keener input costs, but it is also dependent on investment. This is the area which is going to be difficult for the new committee into the future. This is the ideological fault line between my party and the likes of Fine Gael which believes private funds have a part to play in this regard, but private funds need profit and profits in health care provision create inequalities. Sinn Féin wants to ensure health care is funded with public money to ensure there is equal provision in public health care services. That is why, at this stage, I am sceptical about the likelihood of success with this new committee into the future. Nonetheless, I wish it well. I hope the Government means business when it states it will adhere to the outcome of the committee's deliberations.

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