Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister needs to stop trying to cod me, the House and the people. He is fooling nobody. In real life, what lies behind those figures are the people who come into our advice clinics day in, day out, people such as Oliver, a young lad in Lusk, who has been waiting for an appointment with a gastrointestinal specialist in Crumlin. He has missed 50 days of school. He will never get those days back. It is not just what we saw on RTE. Every person on the programme represents another 10, 20, 30, 40 or 1,000 people who wait every day in pain and parents who watch their children in agony, slipping behind because they are in too much pain to go to school.

I have heard the Minister's promises and I am not convinced. Most important, the children, their families and the people we saw on Monday night need more than tea and sympathy. They need more than promises and fine words. They need action. As I have said many times, it is counterintuitive to imagine pumping money into the private sector will, somehow, magically improve the public sector. It will not. Our nurses will go on strike during the coming weeks. They work in the public sector. However, their colleagues are transferring into the private sector. They are following the Minister's money into the private sector. It is wrong. We need to invest in the public sector and support our nurses.

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