David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Every single patient and healthcare worker in this State should watch back the Minister's response to our motion here today. What they will see in the Minister's response is that he spent most of his time attacking Sinn Féin. He points to the North which, obviously, Ministers do every time they are under pressure. What the Minister failed to point out is that in the last two elections in the North, Sinn Féin increased its vote to record levels, which should tell the Ministers across the Government where the people of the North stand with regard to Sinn Féin. Of course, it is all a smokescreen.

The Minister then went on to decry the fact that we described his recruitment embargo and the deliberate underfunding of the health service as disastrous. I do not know what words the Minister for Health wants Sinn Féin to use when it comes to a recruitment embargo and deliberate underfunding of the health service, or inadequate funding of the health service as it was described by the current head of the HSE. Do the Ministers of State believe that as an Opposition party, we should welcome the fact that we now have a recruitment pause and embargo in place in the health service? Do the Ministers of State see it as a good thing that the rug was pulled from under so many workers who were actually offered jobs? What is interesting about what the Minister of State, Deputy Butler said was that the second memo was very clear. It said all job offers which have been made, unless contracts were signed and unless the posts have been approved, are gone. If there has been a change, I would like to see that but that is not what is in the memo.

On disability services, we were getting feedback from chief officers in disability services and community health organisations, and they were unclear, so I contacted the head of the HSE. He acknowledged that CDNTs were not on the list that was published regarding disability. He had to issue a further list. There is confusion and chaos because of what has happened here. All of this is a crisis-driven response to a very deliberate underfunding of the health service.

I was in a number of hospitals over recent weeks in Kilkenny and Mayo, and I will be in Galway next week. I have met hospital management and I have also met staff. If they were listening to the Minister’s response, they would be very angry because they know that everybody in this House welcomes and celebrates the work that our front-line healthcare workers do. They do not like when Ministers try to hide behind their good work and their hard work. They will equally tell me that they are fatigued. They went through a very difficult time with Covid-19. When we came out of the Covid-19 pandemic, most of us got back to what we do - we can live different lives because of the improvements – but they are still living and working in very difficult circumstances with emergency departments that we know are still overstretched. Patients are on trolleys in record numbers, and there are really difficult challenges in our acute hospitals and also in primary care.

I spoke to the chief officer of community services in the south east, who used to be the manager of University Hospital Waterford, about the recruitment embargo. She said to me that it makes no sense because she now has services which are very stretched, including mental health and home support services. She is not able to replace staff, so there is no such thing as one in, one out. She has vacancies that she cannot fill. She talked about a whole range of areas in primary care services for physiotherapy and speech and language therapy, where there are vacant posts she cannot fill. There are posts in home care support services that she cannot fill, at a time when we need to make sure that older people are cared for in the community and in the home. She, like me, recognises the good work that was done with the enhanced community care model, as all chief officers do. This includes the integrated care programme for older persons and chronic disease management teams. However, a lot of them are not fully staffed. None of those positions can now be filled because of this recruitment embargo.

I want to say to the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, who is now gone, that his speech does not cut the mustard. He can attack Sinn Féin all he likes. In the real world, I hope that in the course of an election campaign he takes the same approach that he took here tonight because people will give him his answer very quickly. People want decent health services and investment in our health services. The very fact that we are debating here tonight a recruitment freeze and embargo in healthcare sends out a message. The message it sends to those who have left and emigrated and those who are going through our training colleges, and the message it sends to patients, when we have so many on trolleys and a million people on health waiting lists, is entirely the wrong message. If the Minister for Health does not see that, he is in the wrong job and he needs to go. We need a new Government and a Minister for Health that knows what to do with regard to fixing the problems in our health service.

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