Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I know you are. I was smiling because, like the Deputy, I speak to healthcare workers every day. He heard me repeatedly accept everything is not perfect. I am the first to admit that. We deal with it every day. We are about halfway through the journey that needs to be taken. It goes to something Deputy Healy-Rae was saying, which is that I am acutely aware the vast majority of the discussion - like 99% of it - in the Oireachtas and media is, for perfectly understandable reasons, about what is not working.

I know Deputy Boyd Barrett talks to healthcare workers. I listen to healthcare workers a lot and they tell me they hear all our debates, read the newspapers, listen to the radio and watch "Prime Time", and that they become demoralised by the relentless negativity. It is part of my job to put forward the positives. When I push back, it is not on my own behalf. I am not trying to defend myself; rather, I am trying to provide a strong counterbalance because we rarely hear about what our healthcare workers are doing. How many times do we hear about waiting lists versus how many times have we heard they have halved the waiting time? There is no other country in Europe I am aware of where healthcare workers have achieved that. That is part of the spirited response. I know our healthcare workers hear it all. I am not for a moment suggesting Deputies should not do it; I did exactly the same when I was sitting there and I get it. However, they hear it and it affects them. I used to work with the NHS before I ran for the Dáil and it was the same thing. It is a facet of healthcare that we focus on what is not working and that dominates the discussion. It can be exhausting for our healthcare workers. I am not suggesting there are not challenges but there is way more good and they are achieving way more progress than they ever hear acknowledged publicly.

I will give an example from the Deputy's hospital, St.Michael's Hospital. There has been a modest increase in staff. It is 5%. It could be more but the number of staff has gone up. Of course maternity leave should be covered.

See this speech in context