Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to welcome this legislation, which comes before us annually. Ar an gcéad dul síos, ba mhaith liom a rá libh that I have private health insurance. I had it ever before I came into this House, unlike Deputy Boyd Barrett. I have had ongoing difficulties with my eye and want to salute Professor David Keegan and his team in the Mater Hospital and Dr. Dervan in Bon Secours Hospital who looked after me very well. I took ill over a year ago and was brought into St. Vincent's Hospital in Dublin, a public hospital, and I could not say enough about the doctors and staff there. The treatment I got, including the follow-up treatment, from a public hospital was exceptional.

As Deputy Canney said earlier, thousands of people get good results from hospitals run by the HSE and the Department of Health but there are logjams and blockages. There is too much bureaucracy, For example, for years we could not get home help and home care packages approved. The new stunt is that the HSE approves them within a couple of weeks because it knows there is nobody to provide them. It is an awful situation. We are trying to keep people out of hospital. People are happiest in their homes and that is where they should be kept if at all possible, with a small bit of support - le cabhair bheag ó na daoine sa pharóiste. The people that are around who know them want to come and I salute the people to give home help and home care. I salute carers as well.

There was approximately 3.4% growth in the market during 2022, with 79,553 more insured individuals compared to the previous year. People are being forced to get private insurance because they cannot get timely access to healthcare. They cannot get an appointment with a GP. If my family wanted a vet to see one of our pet dogs tonight, we would have one in half an hour but we cannot get a doctor. People can ring the out-of-hours service and if they get through, they will have to answer 110 ten questions and then they will be told to wait and wait. That service has deteriorated rapidly. I know that GPs are overworked and they have their own issues as well.

Let us take the example of the national children's hospital. The Rural Independent Group tabled a motion to have that hospital relocated. We had the support of representatives of the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation, nurses, Dr. Finn Breathnach and of Mr. Jimmy Sheehan, who built the Beacon Hospital, a hospital in the Minister of State's own county, as well as the Mayo Clinic and other facilities. He would have built a children's hospital on an 80-acre site off the M50 for between €1 billion and €1.1 billion and he would have built it in 13 months. It would have had a huge garden, not like the rooftop garden that will be in the shambles out in Dublin 8, and three helipads. There is no helipad in the one being built, apart from one that is three storeys high for a small helicopter on a fair day, with no wind. I pushed the motion to a vote here but all parties, including the Cathaoirleach, Sinn Féin and Fine Gael, voted against it, having heard the evidence we heard. It was a severe lesson in the pandering to the public that Deputies do. The audiovisual room was full. Approximately 70 Oireachtas Members turned up to listen to our guests but the next day, they came in and voted the opposite way. They voted for this misery that will never be any good. The bill is €2.1 billion now but hundreds of additional claims have gone in. Deputy Healy-Rae and myself visited the site and the back yards of houses are falling into it. We could not believe it. It was the wrong site. One cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. There was not a hope because the space and site were wrong. Nurses cannot get parking there. At the time, someone who was promoting this project said that children could come by Luas. Let us imagine a sick child travelling by Luas to hospital.

Of course, we also have the closure of St. Brigid's District Hospital in Carrick-on-Suir, as mentioned by Deputy Martin Browne earlier. That was a shocking decision. The hospital was taken over and became a Covid step-down facility. The Minister told Councillor Kieran Bourke and Deputy Cahill that the hospital was going to be reopened but it was unceremoniously closed. There are three hospice care suites at the hospital that were second to none. A lot of fundraising was done by the community to put those suites in place. Families whose loved ones had died had collection boxes at their wakes, made donations and so on. A lot of equipment was purchased by people and now that funding is not being returned to the people. We are trying to set up a system to return it nearly a year and half later - a shocking vista.

We lost our accident and emergency units in St. John's hospital in Nenagh and in Ennis. A group appeared before the Joint Committee on Public Petitions and the Ombudsman last week that is trying to get those units reopened. I support the reopening. Those units should never have been closed.

I want to hold to account Dr. Harrold and others who said we did not attend that meeting last week. First of all, I became aware of the meeting when I heard the news headlines on Tipp FM last Thursday morning. I had meetings of the Business Committee and other meetings and we had to launch a report for my committee. I attended the meeting in question for as long as I could and I listened to the contributions. I then had a hospital appointment, so I had to leave the meeting. It is very unfair when action committees want to call people out. We were not invited to attend and nobody let us know they were coming. I stand over my record.

We also have the situation of people being forced into private insurance. I have no real hang-up about consultants working in the private and public systems. They get massive experience in both areas and they share that experience. Indeed, the consultant I attend is doing it. There are many issues and blockages, however. The recruitment freeze that has been brought in is simply appalling. I will not say it is on the lowest tier, but it is on the most vital tier of workers, such as home help workers, who keep people out of hospital, and nurses. I visited a small community hospital on Sunday and met a nurse who has been appointed as a manager but the appointment has been put on hold. These people have to live. They have mortgages to pay and families. These things are being done at the stroke of a pen. We saw the Secretary General moving into the Department of Health from the then Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. He did not do a great job there either. The pay increase he demanded and got is obscene. As for the amount of money the CEOs get, "obscene" is the word. Meanwhile, there is the embargo on recruitment of junior doctors, of whom we are short 500 or more. As a result of industrial action last year, we were promised new people would be recruited. As for the nurses on the ground, na banaltraí iontach, they are wonderful angels of health. I refer to the work they do and the problems they have. They are the people who are not being recruited. The Government regularly refers to thousands of people having been recruited last year but it is mainly pen-pushers and managers who are being recruited. When is this madness, blackguarding, nepotism and downright scurrilous behaviour going to stop? When will the HSE treat the people who are sick instead of people pulling up the ladder after them and the best of nurses then going in to be management? It is all managers and no one to manage.

What is going on in the emergency department of University Hospital Limerick is shocking. It is a so-called centre of excellence but what is going on there is an abomination. It is shocking. I have been in that hospital, as have members of my family. All my kids were born in St. Joseph's hospital in Clonmel but the Government is more interested in banishing the saint's name from the name of the hospital than doing anything else. It was changed to South Tipperary General Hospital and now it is Tipperary University Hospital. What about the cost of all those stupid, silly and pedantic name changes? People want good care to be provided in hospitals and for the staff to be supported. They do not want name changes on badges.

The Department of Health and the HSE have lost the run of themselves. The senior management have moral responsibility for this but they will not accept it. There is zero accountability. It is shocking to have that kind of smugness in this day and age. The former CEO, Mr. Reid, is now chairman of a citizens' assembly. It is rewards and jobs for the boys, but for doing what? The money they are on is unbelievable. It is pure bedlam in the organisations they are responsible for. It is inept management of the highest degree. This is not the fault of na banaltraí ar an úrlar, on the floor. They do a great job, as do the domestic staff and everyone else, but they are overworked and blackguarded every which way. There are layers of managers. God, when the matrons ran the hospital, they ran them well, all by themselves. Now we have floor managers, emergency department managers, construction managers, bed managers, linen managers, hygiene managers and food managers. God almighty, there are managers for everything and no one managing. The lunatics are definitely running the asylum when it comes to the HSE.

Two former Taoisigh told me they were going to disband the HSE. Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen both told me while they were Taoiseach that they were going to disband it but it is becoming a bigger monstrosity every day of the week. The Minister of State across the Chamber can look this way, that way or whatever way she wants to look. I am telling her what she already knows. She is hearing it from people. The HSE is a monstrosity. It is unaccountable and out of control. When we had regional health boards, there was accountability but the HSE just marched on its merry way. People's health and welfare is far from the minds of many senior people in there. It is about careers, getting up the ladder and readying themselves to go into private practice afterwards.

See this speech in context