Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The programme for Government claims that the Government is committed to sustaining the progress to date on waiting lists. That beggars the question of what progress. The number of children on the scoliosis waiting list is growing. December was the worst month on record for citizens waiting on trolleys and 2016 was the worst year on record.

The Government's inadequate response to all this is to build prefabs. The Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, grandiosely described these as temporary modular buildings but, regardless of how it is dressed up, a prefab is a prefab. It is already clear that the Minister will not have the nurses to staff them and the failure to retain and recruit nurses is one of the factors for the nurses' strike next week. Prefabs were to be a temporary measure in schools in our education system, yet over my years of public service I have noted that some of them have been in situfor up to 40 years. Is it not self-evident that the crisis in our health system is clear evidence of the failure of Fine Gael and its partners in government in Fianna Fáil to deal with the crisis in our health service and that the Government has failed in terms of the commitment in the programme for Government?

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