Dáil debates

Tuesday, 26 November 2019

An Bille um an Naoú Leasú is Tríocha ar an mBunreacht (Ceart chun Sláinte), 2019: An Dara Céim [Comhaltaí Príobháideacha] - Thirty-ninth Amendment of the Constitution (Right to Health) Bill 2019: Second Stage [Private Members]

 

9:25 pm

Photo of Alan KellyAlan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate my fellow mid-west Deputy on this Bill. It is an issue he fundamentally believes in as a practising doctor. The Labour Party will support his Bill on the basis that we should allow it go forward to the next Stage for discussion and to see where we can go with it. As drafted, it is not in any way perfect. I presume the Deputy understands that but I fundamentally agree with the principle of the Bill. I am always nervous about the manner in which we bring forward amendments to the Constitution in particular. We will need to do so carefully but the principle of doing this is right. We should do so, as other speakers, and particularly the last two speakers, stated.

We have a long-standing reluctance to constitutionalise socioeconomic rights in this country. We have changed tack on that to some degree in recent years but this is a fundamental change , which I would welcome. Those rights tend to deal with issues such as health, childcare and housing. Those issues are sometimes controversial. People with different philosophies may not agree that they should be enshrined in our Constitution. We should never have to use the Constitution to secure basic rights such as the right to health. Such rights, in a any civilised society, should be natural; they should just exist. One would expect the Government, with relatively bountiful resources, to be able to provide such basic services to our citizens. Unfortunately, and I am jumping out of the realm of party politics, collectively, as a body politic and as a society, we have numerous examples over many decades of our failure in this area. The rest of the EU is able to provide adequate services to their citizens. Unfortunately, I look with some jealousy at how that is done. Collectively, we may be able to improve on that and Deputy Harty's Bill will inspire us to do that.

On the specific issue of health, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights states: "Everyone has the right of access to preventive health care and the right to benefit from medical treatment under the conditions established by national laws and practices." We all accept that. The Minister referenced other part of the EU charter and I agree with his sentiments. Likewise, Article 12 of the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states: "The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health."

These treaties, to which Ireland is a signatory, affirm that good health is a prerequisite to public activity and private freedoms. That is what we are discussing. It is about reaching a baseline whereby everyone is equal and everyone is protected and can participate at that level. By inserting that in the Constitution in the appropriate way, having discussed it, we would end up doing that.

Despite espousing these values on paper, Ireland remains the only western European country not to provide universal health coverage in primary care. That is despite repeated Government promises and a clear pathway laid out in the cross-party Sláintecare report. As the Minister will be aware, I am passionate about Sláintecare. I spent 11 months on it. I fully endorse it, as does Deputy Harty. Sláintecare is our future. It is an across-politics future. In many ways it is the embodiment of what this constitutional change would mean because if Sláintecare was in place, we would all benefit from it. We would all benefit from the charters to which we signed up, and we would all have universal access and a standard of care that citizens should enjoy.

Collectively, we need to ensure that the ten-year programme of work is ramped back up to where it should be because where we are now, unfortunately, is tokenistic. I refer to the volume of money being put into it, the milestones that have not been met, the resources that need to be put in from a strategic point of view, the front-loading that will have to come in the next couple of years in respect of achieving certain infrastructure. Those milestones will not happen. That is unfortunate. It is a failure on all of us but, as the person who his holding the shovel, it is a failure on the Minister. That is worrying and embarrassing for us.

Because of the impact of the past 48 hours in dealing with the most horrendous situations I have every dealt with as a Member in respect of healthcare, I want to plead with the Minister for one last time. I had no intention of doing this until about an hour or two ago. I plead with him to put in place a specific plan for University Hospital Limerick for the coming months because people are going to die. I have intimated this previously but not as clearly as this. Consultants are saying that catastrophic events will happen. In many ways, the inspiration behind Deputy Harty's Bill is his experience of his own work in the mid-west. However, we have never seen the situation this bad. There are short-term solutions. I guarantee I will support the Minister 100%. We need a specific plan for the mid-west. What is happening has never been seen before in this country. There are historical reasons for that. They are not all the fault of the Minister. I refer to TEAMWORK, the Hanly report and all the issues in Nenagh and Ennis hospitals that should never have happened before the infrastructure was in place. The Minister of State who is sitting beside the Minister knows the history, given his own family connections in the area. I will not lecture the Minister. I am beg him to please put a team together to specifically look at this issue. I refer to the volume of people in that hospital tonight and the trouble they are in. A number of consultants and people I have spoken to at senior levels are at a loss as to how they can prevent people from suffering and, unfortunately, dying unnecessarily over the coming months.

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