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

-----because, apparently, somebody had to. I note that a future leader has suggested the same, that when he gets in, he will take charge of it also. There are about 666,000 patients on inpatient and outpatient waiting lists. There are record high waiting lists. Children are waiting for more than a year for access to elective surgery. The Cabinet committee on health which the Taoiseach has chaired for many years failed on the compulsory health insurance plan. The Taoiseach spoke about removing the HSE, but he was not in a position to do so. It was a broken promise. He got rid of the board and made a mess of governance. The crisis in the health service is quite shocking. When the Taoiseach looks back on it, does he accept that the Cabinet committee on health has failed abysmally to tackle the issues arising in the health service, particularly in providing access to treatments for many patients? He has been unlucky with the Ministers he appointed. The former Minister, former Deputy James Reilly, ended up in trouble because of the absence of blueprints behind ideas that had been floated. The former Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, now Minister for Social Protection, ran out of the Department as quickly as he could get into it and was determined to be a commentator, rather than a doer. Apparently, if one looks at the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Charles Flanagan's WhatsApp group, it seems the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, wants to do the same. He is also in a hurry to get out. I would appreciate it if the Taoiseach indicated to me what can be pulled from the wreckage in developing a coherent reality-based health policy and how the Cabinet committee can become far more effective than it has been for the past few years.

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