Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Health care should be a right for all citizens and not a privilege for the well-off. Need, not means, must be the philosophy underpinning our approach to health. The public health system should be free at the point of delivery, based on need and funded by progressive taxation. The Government is opposed to this. It does not support the duty of the State to provide public services. The approach of the Government and Fianna Fáil involves the privatisation of the health service, or at least those bits of it on which a profit can be made. That is why the health service is in a perpetual state of crisis. That is why the Government does not engage in the essential restructuring needed to provide a health service that is fit for purpose and is free to citizens at the point of delivery. It is no longer extraordinary to hear stories of elderly people, children and very sick people being left on trolleys. These harrowing tales are now part of the everyday narrative of life for ordinary people in this State.

In 2017, a record 98,981 patients were left to spend one night or more on trolleys in hospitals in this State. This represents the biggest number of trolley nights ever recorded. Last week, there were 126 patients on trolleys at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, which is in my own constituency of Louth. There were 31 people on trolleys on Wednesday alone. The equivalent figure for yesterday was 27 and for today it is 29. After seven years in power, Fine Gael has had plenty of time to take account of all of this by preparing a service plan that meets the needs of patients. I listened to the Taoiseach and the leader of Fianna Fáil debating these matters in the Chamber earlier today. I heard two failed health Ministers trying to score points off each other, like two bald men fighting over a comb. They made no sense at all. This country's nursing and medical staff and all the other health workers are doing a tremendous job, but they cannot cope. They should not be blamed for the mess that has been made of the health service by the successive health policies and strategies of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

This crisis will not simply blow over. If this awful mess is to be sorted out in a socially just way, a definite and definitive change in policy is required. That does not mean a patched-up version of the current two-tier system. There needs to be a radically transformed wraparound health service that delivers care for all citizens from the cradle to the grave. As we heard when Deputy O'Reilly outlined some of the propositions she is bringing forward, this must mean ending the trolley crisis in our accident and emergency departments through proper investment and resourcing of community care. It must also involve the introduction of a new single integrated hospital waiting list management system, which allows people to move from one hospital to another to reduce waiting times. It also means recruiting doctors and nurses to reverse the cutbacks in staffing numbers that were introduced by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party in recent years. I do not envy the Minister, Deputy Harris, in doing his job. I do not doubt that he is doing his best and will continue to do so. Despite his best endeavours, however, he will not resolve the crisis in our health services because he is looking at the wrong problem. I say that with such certainty because I know the Minister is not trying to create a genuine public health service. I appeal to him to do so.

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