Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is a pity the Minister for Health is not here. We heard today that more than 500,000 people are on hospital waiting lists. That is a really shocking figure. Sometimes figures like that are so big that they almost may not be real for people. To help make it real for the Minister of State I will read a letter sent today to my colleague, Deputy Coppinger.

On Thursday the 2nd of June 2016 my mam had a fall at home out in her back garden ... My mam is currently waiting on getting a hip replacement and has no power in her right leg due to this. We waited [from 4.50 p.m.] until 6:35 for an ambulance to get to my mam. [...]

My mam who was face down in the garden was like this for over three hours, she had tried to pull herself up the garden on her stomach as she needed to get to the back door to get some help but she was unable to do this. We were informed when we rang 999 not to move my mam in case she had injuries that we could not see or any internal injuries ... at 5.30 we were assured that an ambulance was on the way to us, we even gave them a second phone number [...]

My mam is 68 years old and because of waiting for a hip replacement she has had knock on affects [sic] to her health and daily life. In November last year, my mam had another bad fall in which she ended up in hospital for over two weeks in which they found that she had fluid on the brain. My mam I feel is a prisoner in her own home as she cannot leave to carry out daily tasks due to her hip it restricts her in every way and it makes simple tasks very difficult for her to carry out. [...]

My mam is on a state pension and has a medical card and I feel that she is being treated like she is in a third world country in respect to her appropriate health care. She is a second class citizen in the Irish health care system as, private patents are seen for hip replacements in a matter of weeks. [...]

We feel the situation she found herself in on the aforementioned date is a result of a failing healthcare system.

The writer of the letter asks several very pertinent questions of the Minister:

How can this be the norm in our health care system? How can people with money or the means to fund an operation get it done in a matter of weeks and vulnerable people have to wait years? Why do we have a two-tier healthcare system? How can a pensioner in Dublin be left for one hour and 45 minutes to be responded to by an ambulance?

That woman and 500,000 other people throughout the country need to hear answers because these waiting lists are not just numbers. They can prove deadly. The so-called cancer gap exposes the reality of what faces ordinary people who are not wealthy enough to get private health care. If people do not have it they can be left waiting on lists for tests and examinations; as the case of Susie Long tragically showed this can result in death while those who have health insurance can be seen more quickly and have a far lower mortality rate. Today we understand the Government agreed a €480 million top-up of funding for the HSE. This is to fill a funding gap for current services but the current services are completely insufficient if each month thousands of people join waiting lists.

Since the beginning of the capitalist economic crisis, more than 5,000 nurses have been lost to the health service. Pay levels have been slashed resulting in newly qualified doctors and nurses leaving the country. Late last year an independent study backed up the position of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, that accident and emergency departments have only 60% of the staffing level needed. Despite all of that, the HSE last month directed hospitals not to hire new staff to fill positions which had not already been agreed. The approach of the Government is to base itself on the bottom line. For it, the bottom line is money and for most people, certainly for the Anti-Austerity Alliance, the bottom line is patients. The 500,000 on waiting lists is the bottom line in a health service that shows that funding and staff are required.

We warn the Government not to use this crisis as an excuse to increase the levels of privatisation already in our health service, as planned in the programme for Government. The model of hospital trusts and a management unit is taken straight out of the playbook of the British Tories, a model that has resulted in nearly 40% of contracting services in the National Health Service, NHS, going to the private sector in 2015. The programme for Government will also force hospitals to use their funding to pay private companies to provide services if they do not meet their targets. Private companies and for-profit organisations have no place in our health service. They will not end or assist in any way in dealing with this health crisis. We need to work right now to create an Irish national health service, which is free at all points of access and paid for through progressive taxation.

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