Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin and I support the motion. However, having been elected in 2016, I really wish I was here with a motion from the Government and an update on Sláintecare and the primary care strategy in order that we could all participate. We have been through this song and dance, have we not, at every single election? Public health, housing and transport, dealing with climate change and our wanting to pay taxes is the message. Thus, we came together and a cross-party report was produced, Sláintecare, showing the way forward.

I know the Minister is doing his best. I have seen it on the ground and I pay tribute to some of the changes that have come in.

However, we are left going from crisis to crisis. I had cause to be in the emergency department last week for somebody close to me. I was lucky that day in that there were nine people on trolleys. One week later, in Galway, there were 46 people on trolleys. Staff are working full-time. The problem is complete under-resourcing for donkey's years, a commitment to private medicine, diversion of our public money into private medicine, and a National Treatment Purchase Fund that is looking at waiting lists that have been deliberately built up. I spent ten years of my life on a health forum and saw all the excuses. The Minister is inheriting a system but is also part of a system that has refused to say public health needs to be like public housing.

Many things are needed, including more doctors and nurses, and proper conditions. I am in a city where the nursing home in Carraroe has not put back daycare. I know both of the female Ministers of State present are deeply committed to this. There is no day centre in Carraroe and no staff for one. Clifden District Hospital closed over Christmas and there was nowhere to take the pressure off it. I could name the places that have been affected. A fantastic day centre has been moved from Loughrea. Councillor Donohue, the independent councillor, moved it to a hotel. The daftest decisions have been made. Where is the roll-out of primary care? In Connemara, a woman in her 90s had to go into Galway for blood tests because blood tests were not done in Connemara on a Friday. The ECG machine had broken down, so somebody else had to go in for that.

In my own case, somebody close to me avoided the emergency department like the plague to their cost. That patient should have been in the emergency department on Wednesday but we avoided it until Friday. We are making decisions that are detrimental to our health. We are not rushing up to the emergency department. We need the Government to provide a progress report every month on the roll-out of Sláintecare.

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