Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Budget 2024 did nothing to relieve the sense of catastrophe that is growing in the health service, which is not only breaking the will of the staff, but it is also breaking the will of vulnerable people in need of medical care. Based on the countermotion the Government put forward, one thing is very clear. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will continue to throw out predictable lines, ignoring the tough decisions that management needs to make, ignoring the impact on staff and ignoring its role in this growing omnishambles. Government needs to be very honest with people when it comes to funding our health service because of that level of vulnerability. I say this for a very specific reason. I asked a parliamentary question of the Minister for Health on 17 October about the number of paediatric nursing posts that should be in an accident and emergency department. I was told there is no standardised systemic approach. However, there is a programme signed off on by the trauma steering group in December 2022 that sets a very specific number of trained and educated paediatric nurses who should be in an emergency department.

I refer to the impact of budget 2024 on the Regional Hospital Mullingar. I have been inundated with calls, not just from patients but from staff who are working in that hospital. They need to know what impact the recruitment freeze and the directive to reduce those unfunded posts and agency staff will have on that hospital. They need to know if beds will close and how services that are reliant on those agency staff will be impacted. When it comes to the staffing, they also need to know if the new MRI unit, which the community has fundraised for years to deliver, will be impacted. They need to know about the development of respiratory and cardiac day service, the capital development around theatre and ICU development, the development of a paediatric day unit and the resourcing of that absolutely vital paediatric diabetes service there.

I have raised this issue in this House previously when it got to the point that that service was on the verge of closing. Last week that same service had to tell the parent of a seven-year-old boy that he will not be getting an insulin pump and that he will not even be considered for one until next year at the earliest. That team has minimal staff and meets huge demands from across the midlands. That child is now injecting himself into his bottom and into his legs up to seven times a day to allow his tummy to heal from the number of injections. With the indulgence of the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, I want to put on record what that mother, whom I spoke to before coming in here, said. She said, "I'm very concerned that the children in Mullingar and surrounding areas are suffering as a direct failure of the HSE to provide appropriate supports to this team. I'm very concerned that if we have to go to another hospital, we'll go to the back of the list, but at least there will be a list. I cannot listen to Minister Donnelly and other health officials saying how they are trying their best anymore. They are failing our children."

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