Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I absolutely will not. The Deputy can have a go at and slur the Government, if he wants, but when he talks about the HSE, he is talking about hundreds of thousands people working every day. The HSE is nurses, doctors, healthcare assistants and people who get up and work bloody hard to try to run our health service. Thus, I do not agree with cheap-shot political lines at all. I will agree, however, that we continue to face major challenges in healthcare. We are all aware of that. The Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, is presiding over what is the largest expansion in the Irish health service. There are very clear statistics to show this. If one looks at GP access to diagnostics, 500,000 people had access in 2022. There are 20,000 more people working in the Irish health service - the people the Deputy wants to criticise. There are 6,200 more nurses; 2,000 more doctors and dentists and 3,000 more health and social care professionals. We are working on making sure we can train more people. We want to significantly expand the number of doctors, nurses and speech and language therapists we train, in order that we can really beef up our health service. We have seen the largest expansion of beds across the health service and the putting in place of primary care teams. Do we have challenges? Yes, we do, but are our health outcomes improving? Yes, they are. Are we seeing a significant reduction in waiting times, when compared with the Covid peak? We are.

Every health service in the world and every country that went through lockdowns and restrictions as a result of Covid, saw a significant increase in their waiting lists. Until Covid, we had been seeing modest improvements in waiting times, especially for inpatient and day cases. The pandemic really saw our waiting lists go through a very difficult period, but there were 135,000 fewer people waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets of ten to 12 weeks at the end of last month, than there were at the Covid peak. I absolutely accept there are challenges and there is more to do but I believe we are on the right path in having that agreed plan that is Sláintecare; having an understanding of what wait times look like and having an unprecedented level of investment in beds and staff. Now comes the tricky bit and the bit about reform, that is, the new consultant contract the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, has put in place; making sure we staff our hospitals in a way that works, especially around discharges at weekends and - I acknowledge the Deputy is passionate about this issue - how we use our level 2 and community hospitals to better effect.

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