Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Never let it be said, but I am happy to support this positive development. It is an important step forward for women's healthcare. Making products that help alleviate the symptoms of menopause, such as HRT, free to women is a very welcome development. It points in the direction we want to go, which is that all healthcare should be free for all who need it. I refer not only to women's healthcare, but all healthcare, based on a person's needs and not what a person can afford or what a Government is willing or unwilling to put into these vital services. I am happy to support the Bill.

I will comment briefly on the earlier discussion. There is absolutely no question but that our health workers make our health service function and are responsible for the huge achievements of our health service in terms of looking after sick and vulnerable people in this country. Do not let anything that is said in this discussion imply that I am making any criticism of health workers. I doubt anybody is making any criticism of health workers - far from it. The points that were raised were brought to me by health workers, however. That is why I brought them up. I did not make them up. I did not develop them for a pre-election narrative to have a go at the Minister for the sake of it but, rather, because health workers, many of them women, contacted me, demoralised.

Notably, the Minister did not respond on the substantial issues I raised with him regarding St. Michael's Hospital because they are facts beyond dispute. They are not misinformation; they are responses to parliamentary questions from the Minister's Department and from the HSE, stating that maternity leave is not covered. The jobs of women workers are not covered, leaving the rest of the staff, often women, very stressed and demoralised because of the Government's employment and financial control framework. That is what they said. That is not misinformation; it is a fact. The Government does not want to admit it, but it is a fact. The Minister should not try to characterise others as misrepresenting or bringing in misinformation when those are facts and they are coming from health workers. The Minister is entitled to put out his narrative and his propaganda all he wants but, equally, he should acknowledge when real issues are raised about the problems the Government's policies are causing. The Minister sort of guffawed about the CT scanner in St. Michael's Hospital that I mentioned earlier, as if to say they only asked for it in 2023 and it is now the end of October 2024. Does it really take a year for somebody to assess whether a CT scanner is needed in St. Michael's Hospital? Do we need to bring consultants in to assess the business case? The Minister can tell me if I am wrong or missing something, but it does not bode well if that is the case. It does not bode well if the nurses are balloting for industrial action or if they are protesting. It does not bode if well if huge numbers of posts in the health service are not being filled. It does not bode well if huge numbers of people feel compelled to pay large amounts of money in private health insurance because of their fear of waiting lists, sitting on trolleys or the lack of proper resourcing and staffing and so on in the health service. There is no misrepresentation in any of that. I admire the Minister's combative response. For the Minister to fail to acknowledge the problems the pay and numbers strategy is causing in terms of the morale and the capacity of our health service is to misrepresent the real situation in our health service.

See this speech in context