Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted both Ministers are here to listen to what is being said this evening. We have a crisis throughout the country in the delivery of services. We have waiting lists and all kinds of things going on. All Members hear about it in their constituency offices. What do we do about it? I want to focus on my region and the Saolta group, which serves more than 800,000 people.

In Galway, which is supposed to be the centre of excellence for cancer care, we are not able to deliver what we need to deliver. First of all, we do not have the infrastructure in place. The old emergency facility has been demolished and we have built a new temporary emergency department. We are going to plan for a major emergency department with a paediatric and maternity unit on top of that. We must also replace our labs in Galway and I have spoken to the Minister about this before.

Last week, the Minister announced the commencement of the process to deliver an elective hospital. All of this is going to cost money. If the Minister asks me where we will get the money, I will remind him that 25 years have passed since it was first mooted that Galway would become a centre of excellence. It was described as such by Government Deputies in the area at the time, but somebody forgot to pass the message on. The hospital was built in 1956. We still have the Nightingale wards with 12 beds and one bathroom. We have single bedrooms with no bathrooms in them. These are the kinds of conditions we have in Galway, which is trying to become a centre of excellence. We have a great deal of money to invest - I do not say “spend” - but we have to invest it.

In all, I believe we will be talking about €1.5 billion to get things right in Galway. It is not going to happen in time to save people’s lives if we continue at the pace in which we have been delivering infrastructure. For instance, the radiotherapy facility that is now being completed is 15 years in the making. That is something we cannot stand over in the future. Given the amount of investment that is needed in Galway, I suggest that the Minister needs to appoint a project management hit team that will set out a programme for delivery. Everybody in the team should be accountable for their actions to ensure the programme is delivered in a proper way.

The KPMG report said that we will be short 222 beds by 2030. We will be in 2023 in a couple of weeks’ time, so we have seven years to deliver on this infrastructure. The emergency department which is ready to take off has still not got the approval to go for planning permission, even though we have done the enabling works to set up the department and to get it running. We have been waiting for 18 months for a strategic assessment report to be finalised. If we continue along these lines, we will end up with more talk and less action.

I remind the Minister and the Minister of State that we have been seeking since 2017 to have an X-ray facility delivered into the primary care centre in Tuam. I know the Minister has given a commitment that it will be delivered some time next year. The X-ray facility in the primary care centre in Tuam, which was omitted from the design of the building, needs to be put back into it. The money for this has been sanctioned since 2017. I ask for a firm commitment that we will have no more delays on that.

See this speech in context