Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Independent Group for tabling this important motion. I thank the Minister for visiting Kerry last week and I appreciate that he visited the site of the new community nursing unit in Killarney. It will be an important unit, a fact I wish to highlight to him.

The motion is timely. We can all agree that the health service is not in good shape. The system has more than 830,000 people on waiting lists, up from 550,000 when this coalition entered government. In overall terms, the Government's ineptitude is the root cause of the national hospital overcrowding crisis. Today, Ireland has fewer hospital beds than it had in 1980. This is a damning indictment of what is happening and of Government policy.

I do not know how many times we will have to say it before the Government eventually starts listening – it will have to listen eventually – but we want our community hospitals to be able to carry out more procedures. If there was a proper network of GPs throughout the country and if all of our community hospitals – we cherish them and the people working in them – could offer a larger number of basic health services to their communities, we would reduce the nonsensical overcrowding caused by people with minor problems attending accident and emergency units in acute settings. That overcrowding is wrong.

It is not that we are pointing fingers and blaming the Minister for everything, but we are asking, and will ask over and over, for a change in policy. Will the Government please use and enhance our community hospitals? I thank the people in County Kerry who are working in our hospitals.

See this speech in context