David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The people at the top who run the health services get mega salaries that are multiples of what anybody in this Chamber will get, yet we do not have accountability or transparency. At the top of the health services targets set are missed over and over again and it permeates right down to local hospitals where we can again say there are major problems in some hospitals. In some cases, I have to say it is simply bad management. If I were the Minister for Health, I would of course put capacity into hospitals where it is needed. We must of course look at minor injuries units like the ones in Monaghan that need to be properly supported, and if I was Minister, I would do that.

There is also much more we can do. We must bring about a new culture of accountability and transparency in the Irish healthcare system. The Minister outsourced responsibility for the waiting list plan and Sláintecare to the two people whose responsibility it is to manage the day-to-day running of our health services, namely, the Secretary General of the Department and the head of the HSE. The Minister should have taken responsibility. The people who were leading healthcare reform and whose sole job it was to drive reform of healthcare left. They resigned from Sláintecare because they saw the Minister and his Government are not committed to the necessary reforms. They did not see action on waiting lists, and they are right. They did not see action on e-health, and they are right, and they did not see action on regionalisation. When the Minister outsources responsibility and there is failure, he as the Minister for Health must take responsibility.

I was being 100% sincere earlier when I said I welcome and celebrate every additional cent that has been put into our health services over the past two years and I recognise additional investment was made. I celebrate also every single additional staff member who has been brought into the health services, and we need many more. However, we also have real problems with recruitment and retention. The Minister knows we are not training enough healthcare professionals and railed against it himself when in opposition. We need to train more. There are real problems with recruitment and we need to deal with that. There are real problems with retaining staff and we need to deal with that. We do not have enough surgical theatre capacity or diagnostic capacity. We do not have enough beds in our acute hospitals so patients cannot be admitted quickly enough. We do not have enough capacity in the community sector. We do not have the cohesion and the integrated healthcare system we need. Unless we deal with those structural problems, the Minister is going to come into the House with reports and strategies he believes in his heart will work but that I can tell him will not. Listen to the INMO. Listen to the IMO. Listen to the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, IHCA. They are all saying the Minister's plans and strategies will fail because he is not making the investment and changes in healthcare necessary to take people off trolleys and off waiting lists and to deliver better healthcare for patients.

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