Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Last month, hospital waiting lists stood at 887,000 people. Emergency department waits were on average 12 hours and the trolley crisis is worse than ever. Today, we learned that the HSE has instructed senior managers to draw up a cost containment plan as it expects to run over budget by €1.6 billion this year. The cost containment measures are to be rolled across the National Ambulance Service. It is difficult to see how this could happen except through the mismanagement of our health service with the Government and the Minister for Health ultimately responsible. Patients deserve a guarantee that core services will not be cut because of the Government's failure to plan for our health service so can the Minister for Health outline what cost containment will be put in place and can he guarantee that any failure to manage the health budget will not lead to a cut in planned service provision this year?

See this speech in context