Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

How has that worked out for patients in Northern Ireland under Sinn Féin? Hospital waiting lists in the South used to be longer than they were in Northern Ireland but not anymore. In fact, the lists in the South are now half what they are in Northern Ireland. For people waiting in the South for over a year, the list is ten times shorter than it is in the North. That is what throwing in the towel means. It means walking away from the people of Northern Ireland when they needed leadership on the economy and public services such as healthcare. That is what throwing in the towel looks like and that is what it does.

Let us go back to last Friday. After we launched the plan for the elimination of cervical cancer, I visited the new outpatient building for the Rotunda maternity hospital. The building is just off O’Connell Street. It is a €45 million investment by the Government in a state-of-the-art women and infants healthcare facility. It will transform care for women and children for decades to come. Again, there was not a single word from Sinn Féin. Instead, Sinn Féin's motion describes things as disastrous. To read the motion and to listen to some of the contributions, you would be forgiven for thinking there was not a doctor or a nurse working in Ireland today, that they had all left the country and that nobody abroad wanted to come here. The truth, of course, is very different. The truth is that babies born today will reach adulthood in an Ireland where we expect to have eliminated cervical cancer because we have been hiring more doctors, nurses and health and social care professionals than ever before. We are in a position to achieve this ambitious target thanks to the incredible dedication of those working in our health service and the support of the patient groups. The truth is that we can provide new services for women and infants from new facilities because we have expanded the workforce. The truth is that the waiting lists fell last year for the first time since 2015, and they are on target to fall again this year, because of record levels of recruitment for three years in a row.

Since 2019, we have increased the number of doctors working in the HSE by more 2,500. The number of consultants in permanent posts has increased from 2,600 to 3,500. We have increased the number of nurses and midwives by nearly 7,000. We have increased the number of health and social care professionals by nearly 3,500. We have increased the number of non-clinical staff by more than 10,000.

Deputies have understandably spoken about their local hospitals in Letterkenny, Limerick, Kerry and other places. Those hospitals have never had the level of investment they have had over the past three years. They have never had increases in their workforces like they have had over the past three years.

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