Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, should not reach for the 136,000 good staff in the health service to try to hide behind them, nor should he reach to Tory austerity in Britain to try to spare the blushes the Government rightly experiences because of its absolute failure to resource the health service.

The Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, has a penchant for launching and announcing plans but very often does not deliver on them. The winter plan was announced quite separately from the plan to tackle overcrowding in hospitals. I asked where the latter plan is. Clearly, it does not exist. That is the only conclusion I can draw.

I also asked the Minister about bed capacity. The Minister is currently the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform. Riddle me this. He made an announcement in 2020 promising 1,200 new beds. Two years on and one quarter of those beds have not been delivered. This is a crisis of capacity, of staffing and of investment, but above all else it is a political crisis and an abject failure of leadership by the Government and by the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly.

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