Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The health system has always been dysfunctional. We have always had unacceptable waiting lists for procedures. Even when the State had more money than it could spend, we could not get the health system right. That is because it is a two-tier system and such a system cannot work. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cannot accept this because it goes against their neoliberal agenda. When successive Governments value the earning potential of consultants and insurance companies more than the health and well-being of the people they serve, it is always going to be a disaster. It is to the Government's shame and that of Fianna Fál and the Labour Party that the problem is still ongoing.

I recently raised the case of a nurse in my constituency who had been waiting for than a year for back surgery to treat scoliosis. On two occasions surgery was cancelled on the morning it was scheduled to take place because there was no high-dependency bed available. Her surgeon advised her that further cancellations were likely because nothing was being done to address that issue.

Another constituent, also with scoliosis, has been waiting for seven years for an operation. Every day she is in agonising pain. If the HSE cannot manage simple matters such as this and the system is that dysfunctional, we need an overhaul of the entire health service.

At Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda staff have serious concerns about the provision of services owing to insufficient staff and resources such as equipment. The computed tomography, CT, scanner is out of date. A new one was approved on paper in 2016, but there is still no sign of it. The old scanner is constantly breaking down. Daily patients are being sent to Dundalk in a taxi to have scans. People have to wait for five months for a CAT scan, nine to ten months for an ultrasound and 59 weeks, or more than a year, for magnetic resonance imagining, MRI, scans. These are diagnostic tests, not treatment. If people are left to languish on waiting lists for months and years, the Government ought to be ashamed of itself. The Minister knows the condition and state of the health service day in and day out. If it was not for the dedication of front-line staff, we would not have a health service.

See this speech in context