Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

With no disrespect, people are finding it difficult to comprehend this ongoing, robotic, detached response to their living experiences. There is a disconnect between what the Taoiseach is saying in the House about the numbers of nurses and doctors and the reality experienced by doctors and nurses at the front line in hospitals and by patients and their families. It is a huge disconnect. Either we and the people outside are not getting it or the Taoiseach has some insight, that nobody else has, in terms of the reality of people's experiences in hospitals and particularly in emergency departments.

The Taoiseach's comments on the moratorium are becoming very irritating and annoying. People have come to me who came top of the panel last February and gave up private sector jobs in the expectation that they were going to get jobs with the HSE. Those people have not been employed. They were recruited, but the contract has not been signed because there has been a moratorium since last April.

That is still the case. The Taoiseach needs to drill down and to stop coming back with the kind of response that involves seeing no evil, no damage and no harm. The scale of the Government's response to the chronic issues facing staff and patients in emergency departments is not what it should be. It simply is not there. The Taoiseach needs to engage in a fundamental reflection on the Government's approach to this crisis within our hospitals.

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