David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

First, I thank all of the speakers who have made contributions, It is a very important motion. I will respond to some of the contributions, starting with Teachta Duncan Smith of the Labour Party who spent half of his contribution attacking Sinn Féin on the false assumption that we were against the remaining public health restrictions. In fact, we are against giving emergency powers to a Minister where he makes regulations that have never come back into this Dáil for any proper scrutiny or debate. We are seeking proper accountability and transparency. It strikes me there is a pattern from the Labour Party speakers. They come in and spend most of their time attacking the Opposition, looking for a pat on the head from the Minister, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, or whoever happens to be in the Chamber. All it shows is that they are a weak and ineffective opposition.

I refer back to the motion and some of the points that were made in the Minister for Health's speech. His comments on the McHugh report were disappointing on the issue of student nurses and midwives. As Deputy Catherine Connolly pointed out, what matters now is what the Government is going to do. Again, this is becoming a pattern whereby the Government does not oppose a motion but does not implement it either. This is disingenuous. There is nothing in the Minister's speech about when he will publish the McHugh report. There is nothing in his speech to indicate when he will publish the report, if indeed he will. He said that he would seek Cabinet approval to increase the pay of interns but he did not say when that is going to Cabinet. He also said that he will seek approval to extend payment of the pandemic placement grant and will also support additional recommendations. We have no idea what those additional recommendations are. It is not just us; it is also the student nurses and midwives and the INMO, who were disrespected by not being talked to, and in having negotiations with the Government they are as much in the dark on this as anybody else. This is very disrespectful.

The Minister talked about what is happening in our hospitals at the moment. I had a lengthy exchange with him earlier about the real crisis, with emergency department attendance up, trolley counts up, and huge waiting lists. In his speech the Minister said that the winter plan will provide for the appropriate, safe and timely care for patients but it will not. There is nothing in this winter plan that will deal with crisis in our hospitals. It is a crisis=driven response. Every year we come to the winter, we have a real crisis in our hospitals, the Government comes out with a plan that cannot be implemented because one cannot magic up staff, magic up beds or magic up capacity in the winter when we are in the throes of a crisis. All of this is just window dressing. It is a head-in-the-sand approach. This will not substantially increase capacity and it will not reduce waiting lists.

With the head-in-the-sand approach we are actually seeing the cancellation of procedures right across the board, left right and centre. In every hospital I have visited they are cancelling elective procedures and in some cases cancelling time-sensitive care. This will drive up the waiting lists. There is an ostrich-like head-in-the-sand approach from the Minister for Health. He can come in here and say that his winter plan is going to provide appropriate, safe and timely care, but one only has to talk to anybody who works on the front line in any hospital in the State and they will tell us this is simply not the case.

I will conclude by echoing what Deputy Connolly said in her contribution. It is very important that if the Government does not oppose a motion, they will implement it. I would like the Minister for Health to indicate if and when he will publish the McHugh report. More importantly, I want to see what exactly he is going to do. We have some sense of what he will do for fourth-year student nurse interns. We have some sense of what he will do for the first, second- and third-year students with the €100 payment, which is unsatisfactory. There is no sense, however, that this is going to be permanent or what other measures are going to be put in place. I certainly do not believe that the winter plan for hospitals and the waiting list strategy he has put in place is going to work. It is more of a glossy brochure approach to Government where we are presented with all of these plans but in reality does not add up to anything of substance. I do not believe it will make the difference that it needs to make.

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