David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In 2011, in addressing the previous Minister for Health, Senator James Reilly, I told him he could be a reforming, radical Minister for Health. I then said the same to the Minister, Deputy Varadkar. Unfortunately, both failed in their jobs - both failed to reform the health system and both failed to bring us any closer to a single-tier, fair universal health care system. The Minister, Deputy Harris, now has the opportunity to do that. I hope he will not be the third health Minister of this Government who will fail in that duty.

The Minister and the Government present this as new money.

The so-called extra €500 million for health is typical of Government spin. Not even Fianna Fáil in its darkest days, and it was very good at spin, would have had the brass neck to come in and present this as new money when everybody knows it is not. The Government knows it cannot introduce a supplementary budget because of rules which Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil supported. What we have here is a supplementary budget by another name. This €500 million is not extra money but funds necessary to stop parts of the system from literally shutting down. This is why the money is being allocated. Why can the Government not provide adequate funding to our health system at budget time rather than having these continuous underspends every year? We point this out and provide for increased funding for health in our alternative budgets but they are knocked back and criticised by the Government, which then comes in here months after the budget to seek more money because Sinn Féin was right when we said enough money was not put into health in the first place.

The Government purposely underfunds health and then announces emergency funding as some kind of bonus. It is some sort of gift that extra money will be spent. This is cynical. It is cynicism of the worst kind. There is a need for real reform of our health service. The Minister and the Government paint a very rosy picture of our health service when it suits, and they give the sense the Government is improving our health services and that it is making a difference. Let us see if it is true. Let us deal with a number of facts. I received from the HSE a response to a parliamentary question tabled to the Minister on the number of patients at University Hospital Waterford who were languishing on hospital trolleys for the first nine weeks of this year in comparison to the number of patients languishing on hospital trolleys in the same period in 2015. The figure for the first nine weeks of 2015 was 281. The figure for this year was 710, which means almost three times as many patients were left lying in hospital trolleys at University Hospital Waterford. This was just with regard to the accident and emergency department. This was according to the reply to a parliamentary question and Minister shaking his head does not alter facts. Facts are facts.

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