David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

He did not include that we would have provided for existing levels of service above that €1.5 billion. First of all, the Minister is wrong, as usual. People do not need bluster. I want the Minister to talk to patients and healthcare professionals, the older person or grandmother lying on a hospital trolley, the person with scoliosis waiting for a procedure or the child waiting for a speech or language or occupational therapy. All will get worse because there is a recruitment freeze. The Minister called it a "pause." Some 7,000 people have had the rug pulled from under them because the posts they were offered have been scrapped because of a decision by the Minister and his colleagues to underfund the health service. What about people working in healthcare services in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Canada who want to come home? That pause means they cannot come home. He is telling them to stay where they are when we need them most. I ask the Minister again to stop making this about Sinn Féin. He and his Government made the decision. I urge him to reverse the decision to introduce a disastrous recruitment embargo and do what is right for the patients I spoke about and the people who want to come home and work in the public system.

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