Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the serious situation in health. The ink was not dry on the budget when we heard on Friday evening about major freezes in the recruitment of junior doctors, home helps and in all those areas where people are needed at the front line to deal with the most basic needs. Where is the accountability and why do we not have questions with the Minister for Health and Mr. Watt, the Secretary General? This is an outrageous attack on ordinary people. Junior doctors run our hospitals and home helps keep people out of hospitals and safe and healthy at home. They cut the weakest, the lowest hanging fruit, when waste continues in the children's hospital and there is waste across the board, with no accountability.

I know the Minister was buried in the budget, but the chief executive tried to resurrect it on Sunday on national radio. It is shocking that three or four days after the budget, a decision was made last Friday to cut these areas. That is in spite of the agreement the Minister made with those junior doctors last year, in order to avert a strike, that 800 more of them would be recruited. We are facing an ongoing disaster in health into the winter and the Minister is not even accountable to the Dáil about it.

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