Results 6,261-6,280 of 11,979 for speaker:Billy Kelleher

Other Questions: Hospital Waiting Lists (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: I accept that the truth is not fragile and will not break, but the Minister’s accountancy, logarithms and algorithms are very fragile because they simply belie the fact that there is an increase in the number of people waiting on day-case and inpatient waiting lists. Responses to recent questions that we have tabled and the publication by the NTPF of waiting lists show an increase in...

Other Questions: Hospital Waiting Lists (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: One and one always make two.

Other Questions: Hospital Waiting Lists (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: I will give the Minister one simple statistic. In September 2013 there were 49,496 people on the inpatient and day-case list. If the Minister does the sums, as he claims to be good at doing, that is up 7,764 on the same month in 2012, which is 18.6%. There are increases in certain areas. In Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin, and Children's University Hospital, Temple Street,...

Other Questions: Hospital Waiting Lists (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: The figures will be worse if I choose December.

Other Questions: Ambulance Service Response Times (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: It is not arriving.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: 4. To ask the Minister for Health the way in which community mental health services will be developed in 2014; the new funding being provided for same; the number of new posts this will support; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [54387/13]

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: The Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, spoke about mental health services recently in the Seanad. There is no doubt that this area has been the Cinderella of the health system for many years. There is a commitment to A Vision for Change, but what is needed now is the financial commitment to implement it. While the Minister of State has made valiant efforts, she is not receiving a...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: The Minister of State threatened to resign at one point.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: The problem here is the language being used and the way in which the figures are being massaged. There has been underfunding in the past two years; that is a fact. The Minister, Deputy James Reilly, stole the allocation for mental health, taking it into the big black hole of his Estimates.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: Commitments were given that there would be an accelerated recruitment process and the necessary staff would be in place, that is, whole-time equivalents dealing with people in vulnerable positions. That has not happened. The Minister of State is playing catch-up from a position of absolute underfunding in recent years.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: It was the Minister who robbed €35 million from the mental health budget.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: It was the Minister who took that money. We have had enough of hearing the same old nonsense on this issue.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: Will the Minister agree that he is engaged in absolute nonsense? The fact is that the mental health budget was used for reasons other than those identified. The moneys were supposed to be ring-fenced for a recruitment process for mental health services, but that did not happen.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: It is important to look at what the Minister of State inherited in terms of the number of people working in mental health services and where we are at in this regard at the end of 2013. By any credible stretch of the imagination, the bottom line is that there are far fewer people working in the area of mental health than there were before. That is a fact. Taking credit for recruiting...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: That is what is happening.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Mental Health Services Provision (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: My question is whether the Minister of the State will again threaten to resign in light of the failure to secure the full complement of staff necessary to implement the commitments given in the programme for Government and A Vision for Change.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: HSE National Service Plan (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: As is the case each year, we are starting off by denying the reality. The Estimates relating to the two most recent budgets presented to this House were wholly unsustainable from the day they were published. I knew that, as did the Minister and everyone else. Obviously, however, those who operate the system were wandering around in a world of fantasy and pretence.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: HSE National Service Plan (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: In the aftermath of drilling down, the Minister has accepted that €130 million in savings could not have been achieved on the probity side in the absence of the wholesale withdrawal of medical cards from swathes of vulnerable people. Now he is clapping himself on the back for reducing that figure. Either way, he must accept that from the beginning of 2014 he will be implementing cuts...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: HSE National Service Plan (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: The word was on the tip of the Minister's tongue.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: HSE National Service Plan (18 Dec 2013)

Billy Kelleher: 1. To ask the Minister for Health when the Health Service Executive Service Plan 2014 is to be published; the reason it remained unpublished eight weeks after Budget 2014; if there are any substantial changes with regard to the composition of the €666 million savings target set out in Budget 2014; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [54386/13]