Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to question the Taoiseach on the issue of the dysfunctional health service, particularly where it fails to deliver timely care to patients. I will approach it differently from Deputy Micheál Martin who addressed budgets. I would like to question the Taoiseach about reforming the health service and would like him to look at doing so through a different lens. I ask him to look at it latterly rather than just in the context of budgetary measures. He should not look at hospital care as being the default method of supplying care to the population; rather community care services should be the default provider to keep people out of hospital and keep hospitals for those who need complex or emergency care. This does not in any way negate the need for increased hospital capacity, diagnostics or staffing.

The second way the Taoiseach should look at the health service is to look at anticipatory planning and reform rather than reactive planning and reform, which is what we have. The ten-year Sláintecare plan has been lying idle for the past eight months.

Third, integrated structural and cultural reform rather than emergency planning is needed in the health service. That will be key to demanding accountability and responsibility in the health service. It costs a lot of unnecessary money to run a disconnected and fragmented service and expanding an inefficient service will not make it more efficient. How we spend our money is more important than how much we spend.

Where are the political will and determination to reform the health service? We know that reform will be extremely difficult, but that does not mean that it should be seen as impossible. Proper structural reform should not frighten the Department of Health, the HSE, staff or patients as proper reform of the health service would benefit everybody. It is an abuse of staff to expect them to work in unsafe conditions, as they do. The circumstances to which patients are subjected in hospitals when trying to access timely care infringe on their human rights. It also leads to the recruitment difficulties which present a serious problem in the health service. Rationing health services because the Government is not willing to reform the health service is no longer acceptable. The trolley crisis is but the tip of the iceberg of the dysfunctionality. It grabs the headlines, but it tends to distract from and hide the fundamental structural deficiencies of the health service. Even if we were to eliminate the trolley crisis, we would still have not resolved the dysfunctionality issue. Is the Taoiseach satisfied to lead a Government which allows an inefficient Department of Health and HSE to continue working in the manner in which they have been? Will he outline the actions he will take to reform the health service?

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