Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Parents are waiting with sick children. They cannot sleep as they are worried about when consultants will see them and they are waiting for treatment. Elderly people are waiting for hips and knees and every other type of operation. The most serious thing at present is that people are waiting in our cardiac unit, a unit that does massive work for many people in Kerry, Cork and the south of Ireland. In CUH there are people waiting as we are speaking. We have five Ministers for Health, a Government and a Department of Health but we do not have a health system. That is the truth of the matter.

One man I know very well was to have a planned triple bypass. It was arranged for sometime at the start of April. The day he was to go in, it was cancelled and then he was waiting for three or four weeks. The next thing that happened was he got the heart attack and he was admitted to the hospital and he was there for three weeks. He was promised day after day that he would be done the next day and he was only done in the last week. That is not good enough. I have raised this point at different times on the Order of Business. It is happening again. There are several patients there at present in the same capacity, waiting for a triple bypass. What is wrong? The Government needs to put more resources and more surgeons in there. The work needs to be done. These people do not have time. They will get a heart attack and die and that will be the end of them.

The other thing is intermediary care vehicles. It is a nonsense - a joke. The Government did this thing called "reconfiguration of the ambulance service" in Kerry and emergency ambulances were cut way down. That is the result of it. An 85 year old man was to be taken from Tralee to Cork and because the emergency ambulance could not or would not take him, he remained on a trolley for two whole days. That is not good enough. That is not the way to treat our elderly who have served our country and brought us to where we are. I am told there is a way better health service in Cuba where there is a dictatorship. That is the truth. In spite of having five Ministers for Health, a Government and a health service, we cannot serve the people.

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