Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will. I was one of the signatories to the letter to the Minister for Health requesting a meeting. The Minister responded in April that he would not agree to that meeting but that he would instruct his departmental officials to speak to the HSE. We raised it yesterday as a Topical Issue but we did not get a satisfactory response. We now have the situation where the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, Mr. Paul Reid, the new CEO of the HSE, the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly, Members of the Dáil and workers on who are on strike are calling for a resolution. Nobody wants confrontation. The Government has to stop paying lip service, take the reins and find a resolution. I ask the Minister, Deputy Doherty, to instruct the HSE to discuss it with the workers directly or instruct the HSE to go to the Workplace Relations Commission, which has requested three times already that it do so.

See this speech in context