David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It seems that, as we approach budget 2019, the big debate in Fine Gael and the Government is how they will cut taxes, which taxes, by how much and for whom. I do not hear much from the party about fixing the problems in our health service or, indeed, any of our public services.

The Minister will know that there are long waiting lists in many specialties in University Hospital Waterford, as long as four years in some cases for people to see an orthopaedic consultant because we do not have enough of them. We still have beds closed in the hospital in Waterford and in community hospitals elsewhere in the county, because we do not have enough nurses to reopen beds that were closed. People are waiting for two years and more to see consultants across a range of specialties, even though Government policy is that the maximum should be 15 months.

Only this week we heard that three consultant psychiatrists have resigned their posts. I listened to one of them this morning on the local radio station talking about the difficulties and the challenges he and his colleagues faced on a daily basis because of the very poor and archaic conditions under which they worked, as well as the extreme pressure they were under day in, day out. We had four consultant psychiatrists in University Hospital Waterford a number of weeks ago but we now have one, while a part-time locum consultant has been drafted in from Galway to supplement the team following the resignation of three members. Is it not enough of a shock to the Minister that we have consultant psychiatrists, of which there is already a shortage in the public system, resigning their posts because of the failure of the Government to deal with the very real challenges they meet on a daily basis?

I have met the Minister several times to discuss the issue of cardiac care. He knows that while the mobile laboratory deployed has done a good job on the diagnostics side, waiting times for interventions have increased. Time and again, we have asked for a modular laboratory to be put in place to provide, certainly in the short to medium term until we get a second permanent laboratory in place, an opportunity to reduce waiting times which are a big issue for patients. It may not be a big issue for those in Fine Gael who are talking about tax cuts, but it is for the people we represent outside this bubble. It is high time the Minister did his job. He needs to ensure at Cabinet level that we will get the resources necessary in the budget to invest in public service and thereby reduce waiting times across the board.

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