Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister tells us in his amendment that he has delivered record funding to the health service, and that much is true, but a crucial point flows from that, which is that this is taxpayers' money and the Minister's responsibility is to ensure it is well spent. It is not to tell us he has spent it but to ensure good outcomes from that spending. How does the Minister's amendment read to those very sick people who spent their time in corridors, on trolleys, in side rooms and in outside wards over recent months? This affected 120,000 people last year. The Minister is really saying to them that the Government spent more of their money than ever last year but they are still on a hospital trolley. I looked at Sligo University Hospital. A total of 783 people were on trolleys in the month of November, but the Minister is telling those people he has provided certain things, which he has, but that the problem is that too many of them are getting sick and that if fewer people got sick, we would not have this crisis.

The job of Government is to plan and implement that plan in a timely way to deal with the reality of the situation. The Government has reacted too late. The winter plan did not deliver. The Government did not mobilise all of the private beds in time to deal with the crisis. We have a chronic shortage of beds but I do not need to tell the Minister how that has come about and whose responsibility it is. We see smaller nursing homes closing while many people are ready to leave wards, but they cannot because there is no long-term care facility available.

For the past two and a half years, the Minister has watched nurses and doctors emigrate. In the past week, a consultant who has come back from Australia told me that there are more Irish emergency department consultants in Western Australia and Perth than in all of Ireland. Those are some of the reasons we have the appalling trolley crisis. Some of these issues are within the Minister's control and some have been badly managed.

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