Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is better than his comment on spin just now. There are real issues here and are not about money that is being spent on public relations. It is about applying significantly increased resourcing to healthcare to provide better services for patients, to bring about better management of our hospitals, and to fund improved discharge in order that people can move out of hospital when they do not need to be there.

Every week we have this debate around a moratorium on recruitment in the HSE. People are being employed in the HSE but it has to be employment that has funding. The Deputy would be the first to criticise this Government if we commit to spending money that we have not budgeted for. For many years now, we have had huge overspending in health. The Government has been criticised for that. We are, however, employing extra people in a way that is consistent with the extra resources that have been made available. We cannot go beyond that. People in this House keep calling for more and more money to be spent that has not been budgeted for and at the same time are criticising the Government for potentially overspending. One cannot have both.

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