Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The situation we have in health and the reckless underfunding of the health budget this year will have an effect the length and breadth of the country, nowhere more so than in my constituency of Sligo-Leitrim. As we know, the hospitals all along the western seaboard from Donegal to Limerick and including Sligo are those that have some of the highest rates of people waiting on trolleys to be seen. This is because there is nowhere else for them to go. The promised beds that were supposed to be provided in these hospitals have not been put in place. The Minister's budget does nothing to put them in place.

We also have a recruitment freeze affecting people who want to join the HSE. They want to work in it and be part of it. They want to contribute to their society and community. This week I was contacted by a young man who had been successful in a recruitment process for the HSE. In September he received email confirmation that he had been successful in his interview and was being offered a position. He was also asked when he could start. In early October he received another email with a recruitment pack. He was contacted three times with regard to a start date. He prepared to get started in the job he was about to take up in the HSE. He gave notice in the job he was doing. He received two emails two hours apart. One asked when he could start and the other told him his job could not proceed due to the cuts. He was told there was a ban on recruitment and he could not go forward. This is the situation not only for this particular individual - we will call him John - who contacted me in the Sligo and Leitrim area, but for people throughout the entire country.

We have people who want to work in the HSE. We have people who want the long-term stability of having a job and a future and being able to provide for their community and work for their people. The Government is denying them this opportunity simply because it believes in its ideology that private is better. It wants to push people into private medicine rather than providing public services. This is the experience of the public. The Minister can shake his head as much as he likes but this is the reality that people face on a daily basis.

People come to us with individual criticisms and situations. They are the symptoms of a broken system which the Minister presides over. This system needs to be fixed. Having a budget in which the Minister underfunds the HSE and does not bring extra money to it in a situation where it is already in crisis tells me that he is not serious about doing the job he is in the position to do and that he wants to destroy the health system for some other agenda, whatever it may be. This is the only conclusion that the majority of people can come to.

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