David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Let us look at their failures. The trolley crisis gets worse year on year. Emergency department waiting times are more than 12 hours on average, and what has this Government served up? A damning report from HIQA on the danger of University Hospital Limerick's emergency department, with patients left waiting up to 116 hours. The Government has run down the emergency department at Navan, and the ambulance service is stretched thin, with no plan in sight. We have wholesale cancellation of elective surgeries, which is now routine, with more than 16,000 hospital appointments cancelled in May alone. Children with scoliosis and spina bifida face cancellation after cancellation and get treatment only when they and their families have to take to the media to beg for care.

Disability services are completely unfit for purpose. We have more than 700 vacancies on children's disability network teams. That means 480,000 lost therapy hours while 50,000 children are on waiting lists for care. The State and the HSE were taken to court for denying rights to children with disabilities. I say to the Minister, Deputy Harris, that that is shameful.

In mental health, more than 240 children were exposed to risk of significant harm under south Kerry CAMHS. GPs are retiring without replacements, with waiting lists for GPs growing. The dental treatment service scheme for children and medical card holders is collapsing and has been for the best part of two years. The Government's plan for waiting lists has been wholesale outsourcing to the private sector. The Government relies on the National Treatment Purchase Fund to purchase private care. The Government invests in private diagnostic capacity instead of the public system. Home care is entirely reliant on private agencies. Outsource, outsource, outsource is the Government's plan, rather than building capacity in the public system. The Government is building a new national maternity hospital on land the State does not own.

Front-line healthcare workers are exhausted and burnt out, yet there is no joined-up workforce plan and no plan to stem the tide of emigration of those in healthcare. No training targets of substance have been set by the Minister or the Government, and a range of healthcare contracts are out of date. Non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, work more than 60 hours a week. The new consultant contract is years behind and there has been no resolution to pay inequality. The GP contract does not work. Medical scientists were forced to go on strike, junior doctors are now planning to strike, nurses are considering going on strike and student nurses have told me and my party leader in droves that they will leave because they were told by this Fianna Fáil Government they do not do real work.

Many front-line workers are still waiting for the pandemic bonus, which has still not been paid, and there is no long-term sick pay for long Covid for those on the front line. Is it any wonder healthcare professionals leave and emigrate or do not work in the public system in the numbers they should?

We have an absolute failure of accountability in healthcare. There is no accountability for Grace, no accountability in the Brandon case and no inquiry into injury from sodium valproate or mesh implants. We have a CervicalCheck tribunal that is not supported by the survivors or families who lost loved ones and organs of deceased children incinerated without the parents' knowledge or consent. Where is the reform? There is no plan of substance to end the two-tier health service.

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