David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's response does not address the questions I put. What the Taoiseach said yesterday was very clear. It was not what the Minister has repeated today. The Taoiseach did put the blame on front-line workers. I sat here yesterday and listened to what he said and it was 1 million miles away from the response the Minister has given today. He was not talking about managers in the health service but about leave for nurses and doctors. In the view of nurses and doctors, whom the Minister admits do a wonderful job in the health service, it was clear that the Taoiseach was putting the blame and responsibility on them. We all know that it is not like flicking a switch, but the Government has been in place since 2011, since when record numbers have been trying to get into the system to see hospital consultants to be treated and too many have been left on hospital trolleys. It is not that long ago when the Taoiseach launched another attack on health workers when he said there had been no corresponding increase in activity in the health service. That is a falsehood because the Department of Health has noted that attendances at emergency department are up, that the level of surgical day case work is up by in excess of 70% in the past ten years and that the number of outpatient assessments has reached 3.3 million annually. The level of activity is up, but the Government is not putting in the resources to make sure there is capacity. It cannot blame anybody but itself. The Minister for Health and the Government need to take responsibility and stop putting the responsibility for failures in the health service on the shoulders of front-line staff.

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