Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would be the first person to say efficiencies can be made not just in health but in all Departments and county councils across the country. However, this discussion concerns investment in healthcare. The health budget has been cut and the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform has given no indication as to where the savings can be made. I ask the line Minister and all Ministers to ask that Department to provide a line-by-line account of where the spending must be cut and to tell us where it wants the cuts and savings and which parts of the service it considers oversubscribed and undersubscribed.

Bernard Gloster appeared before the Committee of Public Accounts a number of weeks ago and was very upfront. Leaving cuts aside, he has a mammoth task ahead of him. He has to deal with the ineffectiveness and inept management of his predecessor and has to address why Martin Curley left the HSE. Martin Curley made a statement when he resigned from the HSE which resonated with me today. He blamed it on a lack of "will and skill" in HSE management and constant blockages of innovation. He said he no longer believed it was possible to fix the system from the inside. I and the public would like to know if there has been any investigation into that statement. Where have the lessons been learned from someone who was headhunted by the Department and left just one year later? That warrants a serious investigation. We need to know the answers.

By cutting a budget and bringing someone like Bernard Gloster in, he will be operating with one hand tied behind his back. It is fundamental to any business and, as my colleague, Deputy Shanahan, said, to how efficiencies are managed. If we do not have something that is digitally efficient in the times we live in, it will be difficult for anyone to obtain efficiencies anywhere. I ask the Ministers of State to address that in closing statements, please.

Unfortunately, I can outline where moneys have been set out in budgets for years. This is my third, if not fourth, budget and I can see moneys are not being spent because services are not being delivered. This is not to admonish any Minister but the reality is we are failing our children in the services we are providing; as a matter of fact, it is the service we are not providing that is failing the children.

I appreciate the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, will open a third CAMHS unit in Wexford. It is pointless. We need a fully staffed CAMHS unit among those that exist. We do not have it, either north or south. It is a bit like having a third car with no driver. We need to look after the first two. It would be better to provide transport for anyone to whom the third service would be available to bring them to a fully staffed unit. That would create efficiencies and remove the waiting list.

I also ask that a serious look be taken at why one CAMHS in Wexford has a referral rate that is half the other. It is not staffing levels. We have GPs who are tearing their hair out and failing families who tell me they are afraid they will lose their children if this continues. If the referral is not accepted they have nowhere to go. That is what I call investment. If we catch and treat mental illnesses at the appropriate time, we can save an adult and family from years of misery. Unfortunately, we are not doing that at this point.

I could go on about CDNTs. It is a similar statement. They are not fully resourced. We need to look at whether to disband them and move to a service we can resource with the staffing levels we have. There is no point in providing half a service. If this discussion is about investment in healthcare, they are primary to what we need to do and Bernard Gloster must be assisted in that.

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