Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Guím gach rath ar an Aire agus déanaim comhghairdeas leis ina ról nua. Táim ag tnúth le bheith ag obair as lámh a chéile ó thaobh córas sláinte aonleibhéil a chur chun cinn de.

I congratulate the Minister and look forward to working with him and I welcome his commitment to a one-tier system. However, his commitment is somewhat undermined by the programme for Government, which is committed to the promotion of private medicine and the National Treatment Purchase Fund, which I believe is contradictory and internally inconsistent.

I fully support the revised budget. However, I draw the Minister's attention to the Parliamentary Budget Office document, which he did not refer to in his speech. That might be a good place to start because the Parliamentary Budget Office was set up to advise us all in an independent manner. The one thing I disagree with is that it was said the document was a short read of ten minutes, but it certainly was not as it took longer than that. I draw attention to the fact that for the figure of approximately €2 billion, other than three headings, there is no detail or breakdown whatsoever. Many other concerns were raised in terms of performance metrics and so on. I do not agree with Deputy Ossian Smyth, who said it is not possible. Of course, it is possible. This was flagged ages ago by the Parliamentary Budget Office, not just in regard to Covid. I ask the Minister to look at that and perhaps the next time he is making a speech, he might refer to it and say what he is going to do about it.

I wish to raise a number of issues but I do not expect the Minister to answer them within the five minutes we have left. I want to thank the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Harris, who did his best in terms of answering in the Dáil as honestly as he could, and when he could not, he answered us afterwards. However, I did not get a reply on the issue of service level agreements with the private hospitals. I am on record as saying it was the right thing to do at the time. As time progressed, however, I seriously questioned the wisdom of the arrangement. We never saw the contract, which showed absolute contempt for the democratic process. We were given heads of agreement but we were never told how many hospitals were involved, and whether it was 17, 18 or 19. Most unacceptably, there was no service level agreement. When I posed this to the Minister last week, he told me they were in the process of finalising the service level agreement.

Let me give the Minister one example of someone in Galway who was due to have an angiogram today in a private hospital in Galway but was told she would not be called because there was something wrong with the machine, which I can understand. When she asked when she would be called, she was told she would have to go back to the HSE. Surely a service level agreement would foresee that things happen, and if there was a commitment to see her within the time of the contract, then provision should be made for the future. Instead, however, that person is going to be seen by the public health system and she was simply told the contract is up tomorrow - end of story.

Can the Minister confirm to me in writing whether the service level agreements have been reached with all the individual hospitals? Have the private hospitals finally come under HIQA? Who is monitoring the private hospitals? I understood HIQA was to do that, so has it happened yet?

With regard to the roadmap for recovery, while the Minister said it will take a few weeks, there is an urgency to that. For example, there is the situation of people with Alzheimer’s attending day centres run by charities and by the HSE, as well as adults with Down’s syndrome and disabilities, but there is no clarity as to when they can go back.

With regard to contradictions, figures were given for protective equipment of €300 million and €500 million, and the media are talking about €1 billion. This is simply not acceptable.

The Minister said that Covid stretched the health services but they were at creaking point before Covid. In fact, I have repeatedly referred to a letter the Minister and all of us got from Fórsa highlighting the complete inadequacy of our primary care services and the crisis that existed prior to Covid, but which Covid brought into sharp relief.

I fundamentally disagree that we looked after the residents in nursing homes. We did not. I have taken every opportunity to say that because we did not, although we had ample time to do that. While I appreciate how difficult it is for the HSE, we did not put our nursing homes and residential centres at No. 1 on the list. We failed to do that and we failed to be honest about the testing regime from day one. We manipulated and we twisted and we spun.

I ask for openness and accountability so that we can all work together.

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