Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are plans to improve waiting lists and money is going into the system as if nothing else is happening. I have a concern about all this money going in on the basis that, at the end of the day, it is not getting to the end user or patient. There is significant problem with staff morale. Nurses are leaving the public health service because they are completely disillusioned with what is happening. We have fewer staff available to deal with patients on the wards.

There is a daft idea relating to primary care centres that have been built. For example, we have one in Tuam where there is no X-ray facility so everybody has to go to Galway to get their X-rays done. I have talked previously about this with the Minister for Health. His predecessor, Deputy Harris, allocated €700,000 to put an X-ray facility in that primary care centre approximately four years ago. Today, it still has not happened. The equipment has been bought, is being stored in Germany and is probably out of date at this stage. We just cannot build a room for it. That is just a typical example of the challenges we have and how we get around them. We need to look at this from a completely different perspective and get to the nub of the issue.

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