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

Morale is very low within the health service. Human resources management within the health service is very poor. There is severe, consistent and sustained overcrowding now in accident and emergency departments. Waiting lists both for outpatient and inpatient services are very long in terms of the time people are waiting. There is a sense that the Government does not have a handle on health policy or the health service, notwithstanding the number of times the Cabinet committee on health meets. Nine months ago, the Taoiseach promised an urgent and comprehensive Government reply to the Sláintecare report, and money was assigned to the strategic communications unit at the time to market whatever the response to that was going to be. Why is the delay continuing? There is a growing belief within the health service and system that the Taoiseach is delaying committing to a strategy so that implementation does not actually happen or does not have to start until next year. When will the comprehensive implementation of the Sláintecare report commence? For when is it scheduled?

Can the Taoiseach explain the reason members of Government are tripping all over the place to announce building projects which might start in ten years time but refuse to make themselves available on days when waiting lists are published? While this is an approach which first appeared in 2015, can he honestly stand over a situation where officials are sent out to answer on bad news days but Ministers elbow them aside when they believe there is something positive to sell?

Regarding health projects generally, I have asked on a number of occasions about the origins of the specific list of projects. Can the Taoiseach give us an assurance that in no case were ministerial pet projects put ahead of clinically identified urgent priorities?

Today the Minister will meet with patients on Respreeza; I hope to join that meeting. That whole story illustrates a dysfunction at the heart of how we operate our health service. People who were on the clinical trial for many years were taken off the medication last year. Two people died when they came off the medication. As a response to that, 19 were put back on the medication. It is incomprehensible to me that if a country hosts a clinical trial in accordance with clinicians working in our tertiary hospital and in accordance with a company's responsibilities, it is unthinkable and incomprehensible that the patients would be left to drift and taken off the medication without any due consequence of it. I want an assurance that this will not happen at the end of May when this interim arrangement between the company and the patients runs out.

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