Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Government's mismanagement of the health budget is no secret but mismanagement on a scale that forces the CEO of the HSE to escalate the embargo on recruitment, withdraw job offers and scrap more than 7,000 essential front-line posts is beyond belief. This is beyond disastrous when the HSE is already facing unprecedented staff shortages in all sectors, affecting its ability to provide the level of services required.

The health budget should, at least, maintain the existing level of services and provide for any new measures. That sounds okay, but what if the existing levels of service being maintained are bed shortages in hospitals, chronic staffing shortages, existing front-line doctors and nurses run ragged and people lying on trolleys in overcrowded emergency departments? I am speaking from experience. I was recently in St. James's Hospital. The staff in the hospital are excellent but the Ministers of State opposite should go to the emergency department there to see what it is like. It is haemorrhaging staff. They simply cannot work there because it is so bad. I have spoken to the staff at length on this issue.

Children are waiting for years for life-changing surgery. Hundreds of thousands are on long waiting lists for urgent treatments. Mental health services are in complete disarray. There are no staff to deliver home care packages for the elderly, no jobs for our graduate nurses and doctors, and no front-line porters or cleaners. With the Government’s budget, the HSE is not even running to stand still. The Government’s decisions have sent it running backwards. Service levels are not being maintained or even reached. They are being decimated. In my own constituency of Kildare South, their existing levels already fall far below what is desperately needed. There are not enough public health service nurses to reach vulnerable rural patients. Frail and sick older people desperately need home care packages that will not be delivered because there are no home care workers. Some 100 posts are now not being delivered in Naas General Hospital because of the embargo. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have had 13 years between them to fix this health service, and still we are facing into this catastrophe. Mo náire sibh go léir.

This Government’s continued failures have repeatedly put people's lives at risk. Enough is enough. The Government needs to lift the embargo and properly fund the health service. The level of service at the minute is so bad that people are actually going to die. We need to stand up here and say that.

I am going to finish with this. I recently asked a parliamentary question around cancer diagnoses and cancer treatment in patients. I was told that it had improved, that it is down to 57 weeks now, and that it is down 14 weeks on last year. Are we having a laugh here?

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