Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This debate is taking place on foot of the RTE's exposure of the health service in its "RTE Investigates" programme but many Deputies have been raising the issue of health service waiting lists for the past number of years. RTE could do a follow-on series on therapies for children and the elderly, relating to which there is a raft of issues but there does not seem to be any urgency to tackle these problems. There has been constant news of people waiting on trolleys in accident and emergency units. I have been in accident and emergency units with relatives on three occasions in recent months and a series of "Prime Time" programmes is coming down the tracks on this issue too. What is happening there is totally unacceptable. I hope the Minister is being fully briefed about the crisis because it is going to be highlighted in many television programmes. Deputies have been inundated with complaints from constituents about the chronic waiting lists, and about staff in accident and emergency units being run off their feet trying to cope. On one occasion people were taken from beds and put in chairs. I have heard of people on stretchers in ambulances not being allowed out of the ambulance because there was nowhere to put them. This was in the past four or five weeks and not 50 or 60 years ago or in wartime Vietnam. There is a massive crisis in the health service. Waiting lists are one issue but there is a crisis across the whole spectrum.

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