Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We have a serious health crisis in this country, with more than 1 million people on waiting lists for medical procedures. This, coupled with housing, has to be our biggest challenge, but like housing, this and previous Governments have failed miserably to challenge the crisis with any meaningful success. I was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 2016 and it soon became apparent that we had a health crisis no one was tackling, with people going blind for the want a cataract operation; people in dire pain in need of a hip or knee operation and people of all ages suffering on waiting lists and going nowhere. The Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, launched a €350 million waiting list action plan in February of last year which committed to reducing active waiting lists by 18%, but fast-forward to the end of the year, those on waiting lists only dropped by a modest 1.6% - fewer than 11,500 people - instead of the planned 132,000 people. At that time, a staggering 887,500 people were on waiting lists. Some 97,000 of these are children. When the additional 243,000 people waiting for CT, MRI or ultrasound scans are added, it takes us way over 1 million people on waiting lists.

This weekend, three buses will leave Cork and Kerry, taking people on waiting lists, some of whom have been waiting nearly five years, for operations in Belfast under the cross-Border scheme. Many of these people are up at 3 a.m., coming from places such as Mizen Head and the Beara Peninsula. Some of these are people of more than 80 years of age. They have worked honestly and hard in this country, paid their taxes and at a time when they want a small procedure such as a cataract procedure, they are left to go blind. Two of these buses go up for cataract procedures to Kingsbridge private hospital. I thank the private hospital for working with me and others, in saving thousands of peoples' eyesight with cataract operations. However, it is not just cataracts. For the first time, we will run a full bus from Cork and Kerry to Kingsbridge, with people of all ages who need hip, knee, carpal tunnel and prostate surgeries, as well as other surgical procedures. All of them have been left in pain or with the worry that their disease will spread. This same-day, up-and-down bus service, organised by myself and Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, is the first of this type in this country. These long-suffering patients will have their consultations and pre-operative assessments, pre-ops, on Saturday and will be home that night. Each patient is travelling in the knowledge that they will now have surgery within two to three months; light at the end of a very dark tunnel for them. I asked my staff to randomly pull out a file for one of the patients going up for a hip consultation to Belfast on Saturday morning. They told me this man in west Cork has been waiting two and a half years in Cork, on one waiting list or another, and the pain has gone too far. The only solution possible is a reimbursable operation in Belfast.

The Minister, Deputy Harris, was the Minister for Health for many years and during this time, health issues got worse rather than better. I know people in west Cork who are double amputees and cannot leave hospital as they have no home help. There is no endoscopy unit in Bantry. The Minister was down there and he made the announcement, but it never happened. There is no stroke unit for Bantry hospital either. There was announcement after announcement, but it has not happened. The list of shocking failures by the HSE continues, leading Paul Cullen to state in The Irish Timesthat management in the HSE is "stubbornly resistant to change". Does the Minister agree with Paul Cullen's statement? Will he be honest and admit that the HSE is a complete failure, leaving exhausted HSE staff and patients in pain?

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