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

Whereas, in principle, the Government says that it is in favour of Sláintecare, reading between the lines, I do not get a sense that the Government is totally committed to Sláintecare at all. The Taoiseach's reply confirms that to me, since he says there is further work to be done on costings and implementation which is code for me for slowing down the implementation of Sláintecare. I have not had any sense of the Government deciding to hammer out the issues, whatever the issues are that the Department and Government seem concerned about. In the absence of Sláintecare, if that work is going to continue, there does not appear to be any real strategy governing health at the moment within the Government. There has been an absence of a strategy since universal health insurance was abandoned. It took five years to abandon a false promise that was made to the people in 2011. It was repeatedly promised that there would be universal health insurance and we got nowhere near implementing it. Senator James Reilly, then Minister for Health, abolished the board of the HSE and played politics with the whole thing, and then announced the establishment of hospital groups with no boards, just a chair and executive.

The governance of health has been in limbo for the past six years. I now learn the Government, belatedly, will reappoint an external board to the HSE. The situation has been unsatisfactory and incoherent in recent years with regard to the governance side; nobody is in a position to make up their mind, people were appointed not knowing what their mandate is and what the future held for them. Over the past year or so, hospital groups in particular have communicated to us about being in a limbo situation with regard to legislation.

I echo Deputy Howlin's comments on the south east. Prior to the Herity report, a reconfiguration report and an earlier national cardiac report recommended emergency heart care cover for the south east. I do not believe that Cork can deal with the patient cohort from the south-east area. University Hospital Waterford was left very short in respect of the reconfiguration report. Wexford and Kilkenny moved out of the south-east health area, became connected to the Dublin region and Waterford was on its own. Prior to that Waterford had been the main hospital in the south east, or was meant to be, in the South Eastern Health Board's original strategy. Now, once again, it is in a limbo situation and, as a result, is losing a lot of vital services such as the emergency cardiac care.

See this speech in context