David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Key Sláintecare figures resigned because they were frustrated at every step. The Government served up weak regional health areas.

This Government is out of ideas, out of touch and out of time. A new Sinn Féin Government would produce a multi-annual waiting list plan. We would invest in capacity and workforce planning. We would train enough healthcare workers to staff the health service safely. We would engage with young people to encourage them to train and stay in work in the Irish public health service. We would modernise contracts for GPs, consultants, junior doctors, dentists and others to deliver care at the highest level. We would end the two-tier health service and deliver universal healthcare as quickly as we could.

The longer the current Government stays in place, the further we get from real change. I have no confidence in the Minister for Health and have no confidence in the Government to deliver the single-tier health service where people would be treated with dignity, without old-age pensioners left lying on hospital trolleys. One was left on a trolley in Limerick for 116 hours while his wife had to say goodbye. That is not the Ireland I want to live in, and that is not the health service I want to see.

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