Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is quite clear that the Government has washed its hands of health in the same was it washed its hands of housing. This is why I have constituents across north Kildare who cannot afford it but who are pushing themselves financially to pay for private health insurance after they have paid their taxes including USC, and PRSI, not because they have notions but because they want to stay alive. Elderly constituents or people with health conditions tell me they scrimp and save to afford the private health insurance so they can get a fast appointment for a colonoscopy, an MRI, or a CT scan. That is no exaggeration; it is the reality of the health service on the Minister's watch. I have spoken to management in Naas General Hospital and they are very concerned following this budget for 2024 and the underfunding within it. I remember around 20 years ago when I moved to Kildare, a new hospital was proposed for Naas but there has not been a budge about that since. We love our hospital and we value our hospital staff who work in it. We want and need our services in the community in north Kildare so people are not forced off to Dublin. We are due to get an endoscopy unit in 2033. This is 20 years later than initially stated. How does the Minister expect people in north Kildare to hold on with rectal bleeding or unresolved indigestion for another ten years? We are a hardy lot in north Kildare, but we are not that good.

Elderly people in particular are terrified to go to the accident and emergency in Naas or to be taken there. Up to the end of May last year, 1,269 patients in the general population left the emergency department at Naas General Hospital without being seen at all and that compares with 903 in the same five-month period the previous year. Trolley figures as heard on KFM Radio Kildare are horrendous when they are announced every day.

Before I finish, over the past couple of weeks constituents of mine in north Kildare have been contacting me about different health issues but I was struck by how concerned they were about hospitals in Gaza. I ask the Minister on behalf of these constituents and on my own behalf as well, as a human being, to use his position as Minister for Health to push for fuel, medial aid and protection for hospitals in Gaza to stop newborn babies and people on life support dying, to keep them in fuel to keep their incubators going, and to use his position at Cabinet to push for a cease-fire in Gaza so that fuel and medical aid can get into these hospitals without delay.

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