Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputy Danny Healy-Rae.

I am delighted to speak on this motion and I thank Sinn Féin for tabling it. We have had a waiting list crisis in this country for as many years as I have been in the Dáil and long before that. The stress this is causing staff in hospitals is beyond words. I see at first hand the crisis in accident and emergency in Cork University Hospital, CUH, when I visit. I often wonder how staff work in such conditions. Much of the pressure could be avoided if facilities in hospitals, such as Bantry General Hospital and Mallow General Hospital, were up to standard.

Consider what happened in Bantry hospital last summer when we went for up to three weeks without a consultant. That was down to incompetence because the issue was flagged well in advance. There is not a chance that would have been allowed to happen in the capital but the person in management in the HSE who thought the people of west Cork would sit on our hands and accept being treated like second-class citizens was wrong. Management played games with people's lives but thanks to the great people of Bantry and its surrounds who protested on the streets after waiting weeks for the doors to be opened, consultants were then found and Bantry was back in business a few days later. Let me assure the people of Bantry hospital catchment area, from Dursey Island, Sheep's Head and Mizen Head to Bandon and Innishannon and down to Clonakilty and Kinsale, I will keep this and every Government on their toes every day while I am elected to represent them to provide the best service they can possibly give to Bantry General Hospital.

Bantry hospital has top staff who deserve to be provided with the best facilities, similar to those in other hospitals.

So help me God, if we do not. Simply put, there will be hell to pay. To help alleviate pressure in CUH, the Minister must invest in Bantry General Hospital and deliver an endoscopy unit, a physiotherapy unit, a cataract theatre and a five-day working surgery unit. The people of west Cork deserve no less.

Investment must be made in hospitals like Bantry. In 2017, the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, arrived in Bantry and announced with great fanfare that the endoscopy unit was to be built but five years on, in 2022, not a sod has been turned on the project. If it was built on announcements by politicians, we would have had an endoscopy unit in every town and village in west Cork. It is nearly embarrassing to hear year after year that this endoscopy unit will be built. We should be in a situation where an announcement in 2017 means completion no later than 2019. This would see better services on the ground and stop politicians falling over each other announcing something announced five years previously.

Waiting lists are shocking in this country. Like other Members, I have people queuing in my clinics pleading to get them an appointment. From what I see, the queues are getting bigger. Deputy Danny Healy-Rae and I have taken 84 buses to Kingsbridge Private Hospital in Belfast so people in their 70s, 80s and 90s could get urgent cataract surgery, a 25-minute procedure. The Government showed no respect to the people of west Cork, Cork city and Kerry. It left them on a waiting list for five or six years and if they were unlucky, let them go blind.

Where is the money going? It is time to come clean. The top brass in the HSE are getting better than a couple's wages in most homes in expenses alone and there is no accountability. It is astonishing. They get a top-up bonus of another €50,000 or €100,000 whenever they want. What has the Minister done any different to his predecessor, Deputy Harris, in whom I tabled a vote of no confidence due to his handling of the health crisis at that time, which toppled the Government? He will be lucky if the same is not done with him. Due to Covid and now the war in Ukraine, the eye will be off the ball in this country. While the eye is off the ball, people will suffer. We must change our model of hospital care. We must look at the private hospital model. They are open and working the full seven days and nights of the week. We cannot be in a situation that a hospital almost closes down on a Friday evening until Monday morning. We cannot have people waiting for surgery that cannot have it as the clock strikes five in the evening. We must look at the private model in hospitals such as the Kingsbridge in Belfast and probably plenty of others that operate on a 24-7 basis. That way, things will get done.

While I have the floor, I wish to raise Clonakilty Community Hospital. Perhaps the Minister will have an opportunity to inform me when the funding will be made available to bring the hospital up to HIQA standards. We have been told year in, year out that the hospital is not up to standard. It is a beautiful hospital, but it is still not up to the standard set by a previous Government. I do not have anything negative to say about hospitals like the ones in Schull and Bandon. They are fabulous community hospitals, and Clonakilty deserves the same as other hospitals.

See this speech in context