Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Green Party will be supporting this motion. We have no confidence in Fine Gael's management of our health system. First it promised universal healthcare and said that it would be delivered. It was to be its first priority and a key thing. It was then thrown away and forgotten about. It was meant to be replaced by Sláintecare, but nothing has happened. If we were really implementing Sláintecare I do not believe we would have had the nurses' dispute because they would be central to the advance of our health system, as they should be. They have no confidence in this Minister or in Fine Gael's policy and we agree with them on that. Nor do our GPs have confidence because they are also suffering from the lack of proper management not just under this Minister, but over the last number of years. They have been left in a chaotic situation. Any GP will say that.

On the approach to the national children's hospital, while we obsess too much about the big hospital-based system, this incredible and massive overrun will take away money that could be used for the primary and preventative care system which would make our health system work.

We cannot express confidence when we see that happening. The other day in the Dáil the Taoiseach said in a thoughtful way that he had reflected long and hard on how the CervicalCheck scandal was being managed. He was right to do so. The Government's immediate reaction was to panic, join the Opposition, throw the public servants under the bus and promise things that were not deliverable. That created chaos for CervicalCheck, flawed as it was and granted that the reporting of the misdiagnoses should have been done differently. It was an occasion for the Government to stand up for the things that sometimes worked in the system. That failing also means that we cannot have confidence either in the Minister or the approach to the health service Fine Gael has overseen in the last eight years. It has been getting it wrong; therefore, we cannot vote confidence in its management.

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