Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Tá mé ag filleadh ar an cheist a d’ardaigh an Teachta Shortall maidir le Sláintecare. Is polasaí é a foilsíodh i mí Bhealtaine 2017 nuair a bhí an Tánaiste ina Thaoiseach ag an am. Bhí sé lárnach sa phróiseas. Is polasaí é atá teipthe ina iomláine ag an Rialtas go háirithe de réir fianaise na mbeirteanna sinsearacha a d’éirigh as a bpost le déanaí.

I am returning to the subject raised by Deputy Shortall. I read about it with disbelief. The resignations were shocking enough, but even more so was the manner in which the Government has dealt with them. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, has come in here today and once again minimised the issue, putting the blame on Covid.

In addition to housing, health was the biggest issue for all of us in the past three elections, from 2011 onwards. In 2016, my group sent a member to the committee which worked on a cross-party basis to produce the Sláintecare report. Rather than come in and continuously complain and highlight deficiencies, which I am acutely aware of in Galway city, we went with the cross-party report, which was finally produced in May 2017. There were 46 key recommendations in the report covering many areas, one of which was the recommendation to roll out a regional framework. Since then, we have had the resignations of two senior figures and a third resignation, that of Professor McCarthy from the South/South West Hospital Group. What did Tom Keane say when he resigned? He said that "the requirements for implementing this unprecedented programme for change are seriously lacking." We do not know what Laura Magahy said, because when she met the Minister for Health it remained secret with him, although when he came out of the meeting his spokesman described the meeting as a "standard meeting around lots of issues" and looking at "various elements of the ongoing reform." That was the comment made about the Minister's meeting with Laura Magahy. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform stated earlier that there had been a meeting with Tom Keane. When did that meeting take place? Are there minutes of it? I understand the gentleman in question is out of the country.

I come from Galway city. Many people have suffered and are suffering as a result of public-private medicine and the failure to invest in public medicine. As Deputy Shortall said, Sláintecare was to be the blueprint for reform. I have repeatedly pointed out that it is unusual for doctors and consultants to write to us, but they have done so in Galway to tell us of the extraordinarily long list of people waiting, for example, for orthopaedic surgery following bone breakages. I have lost my train of thought because so much has happened in that time. Two theatres went out of action in 2017 and I understand they are now being built.

Rather than me coming in here on a regular basis talking about trolleys, long lists and letters from doctors and unions prior to Covid, outlining to us the delicate state of the health system, could the Minister please explain to us what the Government has done about the two senior resignations and the third one from Professor McCarthy from the South/South West Hospital Group?

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