Ulick Burke (Fine Gael)

I support Senator Cox in her request for an urgent debate on the Great Southern Hotels issue. In recent years, all members in this House have voiced their concerns about the lack of access to specialist health care in all parts of the country. They have drawn attention to the unacceptable delays and long waiting lists for such care. An article in The Irish Times today clearly indicates that there is a need for co-operation between private and public health care providers. Such co-operation does not exist, particularly in the western Health Service Executive area. It is galling, to say the least, to see that for services such as radiotherapy, cardiology and orthopaedics, where there are long waiting lists, people must go from Galway to Dublin, England, Scotland or Belfast to access such specialist therapies, despite the fact that the Galway Clinic has offered 20% of its bed capacity to the public sector. That offer has been ignored and the clinic is being bypassed.

We cannot say that funding is the difficulty because last year €200 million was returned by the Department of Health and Children to the Exchequer. In the last two months of 2005 approximately 200 people passed the doors of the Galway Clinic on their way to obtain treatment in England. How can we say that we have co-operation within the health service, particularly in the west, where access is a real problem? The waiting time for access to radiotherapy services in St. Luke's in Dublin is ten to 12 weeks but we have a state-of-the-art facility in Galway which is being bypassed. Every effort was made by the authorities in the Galway Clinic to co-operate with the HSE, during the planning, construction and administration phases of the project but this was cast aside and ignored.

I ask the Leader to request that the Minister for Health and Children would knock heads together to ensure that the HSE and those who are offering valuable services to those in need in the west co-operate with each other. The Minister herself must take some of the blame for this problem. Senator McHugh has on several occasions asked for co-operation between the HSE northern area and the authorities in Northern Ireland with regard to facilities that might be available in Derry. However, the Minister decided that she would provide access to services, in co-operation with the Northern Ireland health services, in Belfast. Why was Galway ignored? I urge the Leader to request that the Minister for Health and Children carries out an urgent review of co-operation between the HSE and private sector health service providers.