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

The Minister said I was taking a cheap shot. I am not taking a cheap shot at anybody. I am standing for the people who are suffering in this country. I am standing for the staff who had been neglected by the Government, at the very top, and have been overstretched in their hospitals. How can the Minister stand here and praise a system that leaves a double amputee in a hospital, unable to go home because of not being able to find home help? How can he stand over the HSE which announces, year in and year out, that it will have an endoscopy and stroke unit in Bantry hospital, with no delivery? How can he stand over people travelling by car, passing Bantry General Hospital after 8 p.m. every night, because the accident and emergency department there is closed and having a to travel 120 or 130 miles to a bottleneck at Cork University Hospital? How can he stand over a mental health service that is losing beds in west Cork? How can he stand over people of more than 80 years of age travelling to Northern Ireland, getting up at 3 a.m. and not coming back until 36 hours later, to have a 25-minute procedure? The Minister stands up to tell me I am taking a cheap shot. He is taking a cheap shot at every man, woman and young person who will travel on that bus - more than 70 of them - next weekend, who are suffering in pain. They need a hip, prostate or cataract operation and the Government has failed miserably to deliver it for them.

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