David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I know the Minister did not say it. I am talking about his written speech. In fact, it is quite the reverse. I think the work that University Hospital Waterford management has done is phenomenal and I have said for some time that it is a beacon of hope for other hospitals. We need the same level of management elsewhere. It has not only been the manager, who is really important as the person who drives on the team, but the team effort in University Hospital Waterford that has resulted in hitting the milestone of 1,000 days without having a patient on a trolley. That is phenomenal and we need the same level of management in other hospitals.

As a Deputy from Waterford, I must also point out - know the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, will partially agree with me on this - that we had to fight for resources. The mortuary was stuck in the capital process for about seven years before it was delivered. The HSE had to be shamed into delivering it because of what was happening in the mortuary. It was not because of anything the system did. Management fought for it, as did staff. The new mortuary was hard-fought and won. The battles we had to go through took the gloss from it when it came. It was a similar scenario with the cath lab. At how many meetings did the Minister of State, before she was ever appointed, and I beg Ministers for Health to give us the service we need? We still have no plan to deliver 24-7 cardiac care. Then there was the palliative care unit, half of which had to be funded by the people of Waterford. The new Dunmore wing, which has good single isolation rooms for a hospital and made a big difference during Covid and for palliative care, also came out of a battle to get matching funding lasting many years. The people of Waterford had to put their hands in their pockets to fund it. I do not need to be reminded of how good University Hospital Waterford is because I am in there all the time. We meet hospital management and we have seen the good and the bad. We have also seen a lot of hard work done by people to get us to the point we are at today. It did not happen by accident but because of the level of campaigning by local people in the constituency.

To address the substance of the motion, we need to do more. Often, when I raise issues, the Minister's response is to say he agrees with me. Maybe in some respects he does agree with me but agreeing with somebody and doing what needs to be done are two separate things. I acknowledge lots of the additional investment that has been made in the health services recently. As the Minister said, I acknowledged the new hospital contract, which is very important and will make a big difference. I will acknowledge it if we get progress on the new contract for junior doctors, which will also be important. However, the recruitment and retention crisis in our health service will not be addressed unless we substantially increase training places. To say the heads of the universities were pleasant when the Minister met them is not a plan. The Government has to act. It has to make a policy decision that it is going to do this. While I accept our universities have a level of autonomy, the Oireachtas, as a political body, can make a decision to get serious about workforce planning. This means substantially increasing training places, ratcheting up training across all elements of healthcare and proving better opportunities for graduates to work in the public system. Some work has been done but we have an awful lot to do still to get many more of them to work in the system rather than emigrate.

An Teachta O'Reilly, who is sitting behind me, has tabled numerous motions on recruitment and retention over many years, yet we still have not reached the point where we have the training places we need. We have not dealt with the recruitment and retention issues that existed long before I took up this role. We have a long road to go on this and it must be the number one priority for me, the Minister and everyone in healthcare in the coming years.

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