David Norris (Independent)

I am grateful to Senator McCarthy for giving me this opportunity because I had not intended to say anything. However, I am happy to be able to do so.

Deputies Martin and O'Malley are good and caring Ministers, but health is a poisoned chalice. It is one of the most difficult areas politically for any party to address. The problem is that more and more money is spent, but the customers are less and less satisfied. There is a series of reasons for that. New medical technology is available and ailments that were untreatable and incurable ten, 15 or 20 years ago can now be treated successfully. It is tantalising for someone with a painful or terminal ailment to know that treatment is available but that he or she cannot avail of it. It is the ultimate in tantalisation.

Services are much more expensive now. In my day, people went into a corner and died of an inward pain and that was it. They acknowledged that we are all perishable goods. Now people think that sickness is an insult visited upon them by Government and they expect to be cured. That will not happen because we are perishable goods and we will all croak at some stage. However, within the health service, things need to done and I am glad that there will be rationalisation. We have too many health boards and there are 58 agencies in the system, 30 of which will be abolished. I hope that this is done in a focused way and that there will not be abolition merely for the sake of cutting things out.

I welcome the opportunity to speak because I visited an elderly Hungarian relative in St. Vincent's Hospital yesterday. I have nothing but praise for the nursing staff there; they are absolutely wonderful. We are blessed with regard to the Irish and foreign nursing staff working in our hospitals. We will lose those wonderful nurses from the Philippines because of the technicality that we will not allow their spouses to come to this country and work. That needs to be addressed because we will be in real difficulty if we lose this element, to which we have become accustomed. It would not be any skin off our noses if we let them in and permitted them to work.

I looked at the ward where my relative was being wonderfully looked after. In an excellent hospital in Dublin, the ward of 30 people had one ancient bath, no shower and one lavatory. The bathroom was crowded with all kinds of other bits and pieces of medical paraphenalia. How they get the poor old people in and out I simply do not know. There were six people per division of the open ward. Some of them are dying and, while I was there, some were making involuntary noises. A radio was playing somewhere. The people were very ill, elderly and in considerable discomfort. Of the 30 people in this acute surgical ward, there were five for whom nothing more can be done but there is no place to send them. They are occupying five beds which are needed by acutely ill people in need of treatment. In a very gentle and nice way, this was explained to me by a member of the staff who is aggrieved on behalf of the patients and who is well motivated. I am not saying this in any partisan way.