Geraldine Feeney (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, Deputy Seán Power, to the House and am glad to have the opportunity to speak on the subject of our accident and emergency departments. Undoubtedly, there are problems with accident and emergency units and as politicians and legislators, we cannot turn a blind eye to that fact. However, all is not bad. There are areas of the country where accident and emergency units are running quite well. As with everything, one always hears the bad story but not always the good one.

When the rainbow coalition Government left office in 1997, the budget for the Department of Health and Children was approximately €5 billion. If any rational person was told that nine years later, in 2006, the budget would be €13 billion and that an additional 40,000 personnel would be employed in the health service, he or she would rightly assume that there would be no problems whatsoever in the health system. The natural assumption would be that everything would be running smoothly.

There are many reasons the health service is not up to scratch despite the investment of €13 billion, which is an enormous amount of money. Our population has increased, as has life expectancy. Factors such as MRSA and the winter vomiting bug, although seasonal, can affect the entire health system from time to time. I will not be flavour of the month when I say there are other factors affecting our health service which relate to its employees, not least the members of the IMO and the IHCA. Those organisations block the Tánaiste every time she makes a good proposal that should be supported by all parties. Not alone does the Opposition in these Houses block her good ideas, but the unions responsible for consultants and doctors also block, hinder and delay progress. Until the mindset underpinning such blocking behaviour is changed, the problems within the health service will not be resolved.

As other speakers have pointed out, alcohol and substance abuse can often cause overcrowding in accident and emergency units. Senator Feighan related how his elderly mother had a bad experience in the accident and emergency unit in Sligo but had a much better experience when she was in Dublin. It is almost a countryside versus Dublin scenario. In my experience, however, the larger hospitals outside of Dublin have better accident and emergency units than those in the capital, which makes sense, given the proportion of the population using the hospitals in Dublin. I know from my time on the Joint Committee on Health and Children and on the Medical Council that areas like Limerick, Waterford, Kilkenny and Sligo have fewer problems in their accident and emergency units than is the case in Dublin, Galway or Cork.

I was annoyed to hear Senator Browne refer to secrecy and cover-up in the Department of Health and Children. The Senator is, like me, a member of the Joint Committee on Health and Children. The Tánaiste and Professor Drumm appeared before that committee approximately three weeks ago. They were scheduled to attend the meeting for an hour and a half. They arrived at 9.30 a.m. but did not leave until 2 p.m.

I am glad Senator Browne has returned to the Chamber. I am not attacking him but am picking him up on something he said earlier about secrecy and cover-up in the Department. When the Tánaiste and Professor Drumm appeared before the joint committee, they stayed from 9.30 a.m. until 2 p.m. There was no attempt to run away from any facts. They acknowledged that there are problems with the health service. If the Senator thought there was secrecy or some kind of cover-up happening, he should have said so. He asked very relevant questions, which I believe were covered in the media the following day. It is unfair to attack people who attended the joint committee meeting and gave so much of their time and who are available to appear again before it any time they are asked.