Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

First, the Government was going to scrap the HSE, but it did not. It was going to fund healthcare via universal health insurance, but it did not. It scrapped the board of the HSE, but last year, because of CervicalCheck, it decided to put it back in place. It has now appointed it. There are ten people on it, but it turns out that not one person on it has a medical background.

Matters have been getting even worse this year. January marked a new high in the number of patients waiting for hospital appointments. The figure is now 523,000. The Taoiseach, when he was Minister for Health, set a target that nobody would have to wait for more than 18 months. Today 100,000 have been waiting for18 months. Hundreds of GPs took to the streets outside Leinster House and the ambulance drivers took industrial action. The nurses and midwives also took industrial action, as did the psychiatric nurses.

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