Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The reason I have asked the Taoiseach if he chairs the Cabinet Committee on Health is straightforward. It is increasingly clear that one area of Government policy that is in a shambles is health. After holding the health portfolio for six straight years, Fine Gael has no discernible health policy. The compulsory health insurance model of the James Reilly era was abandoned prior to the last general election, having been told for five years that it would happen and there were all sorts of report on the issue. Furthermore, the last Government significantly disrupted the health service through initiating the compulsory health insurance model by creating a structural and organisational crisis, but then nothing happened and the policy was abandoned. The then Minister for Health, Deputy Leo Varadkar, spoke about privatising some elements of the service, but he got out of the Department as fast as he had got into it. Now we have a new set of circumstances. The programme for Government states health is a priority, but waiting times are going through the roof. Elective operations are being cancelled and outpatient and inpatient waiting lists and times are at record levels. That is how they are being described. Emergency departments are at a critical point. Yesterday on the "Six One News" hospital spokespeople stated the figures had reached an all time record. Cork University Hospital had a record number of patients on trolleys. Some 80 patients had been admitted in one day to its emergency department, which the chief executive officer equated to the numbers that would attend a small hospital. The programme for Government states health is a priority, that emergency department waiting times will be dramatically reduced and that change will be driven forward, but none of this is happening. I genuinely thought the Taoiseach was no longer chairing the committee because things were getting worse.

The Cabinet committee is clearly not playing the central role we expected of it. If it is playing that role, where is the evidence to support that contention?

We do not have any sense of long-term funding structures. Is the Government committed to a public health service model in terms of funding?

In the past, particularly last year and the year before that, the Health Service Executive's national service plan was amended by Ministers in Cabinet to cover up the funding gap for promised services. Will the Taoiseach give a commitment that the service plan for next year will be published without any ministerial interference or interventions? Will he commit to having a debate in the House on the health service plan when it is published and to full transparency in committee and plenary session in terms of the plan?

Rome is burning, with issues appearing across the full spectrum of the health service, from recruitment to service provision and delivery. This morning we discussed mental health. I ask the Taoiseach to change tack on this year's allocation for mental health. Reasonable and quick interventions could be made on the counselling front by providing more resources to those who offer counselling, particularly in the non-governmental organisations. The Government should consider using the private sector to provide mental health services. Could some hospitals contract in professionals in the interim given that the public service states it cannot recruit staff and fill vacancies? Community intervention teams could be improved and the primary care counselling service extended. To follow up on this morning's discussion, I ask the Taoiseach to think about these suggestions, on which an immediate response is not required.

In the context of an overall health budget of €50 billion, surely it is possible to provide more than €15 million in additional mental health funding. This would send a positive signal that we are serious about mental health. As the chair of the Cabinet committee on health, it is within the Taoiseach's capacity to ask his Ministers to do something concrete on mental health in 2017 to show the Government is with the people on this issue, particularly the younger generation who are very concerned about it.

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