Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

——to be held to account as they are equally as guilty as the Minister, Deputy Harney. The Fitzgerald report on the HSE paints a poor picture. In 2004 the Minister, Deputy Harney, said that it was "a-once-in-a-generation event ... our generation's chance to put patients first in the design of the management of health services". Who will accept responsibility? The former Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Micheál Martin, sure as heck did not. He ran from everything, commissioned report after report and denied everything when he appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children and was asked a straight question about responsibility. This is what the former Minister, Deputy Micheál Martin has done. Fianna Fáil members do not want to know anything about health. They are pleased with Deputy Harney as Minister for Health and Children because she is honest and sincere.

The Minister should not allow herself to be painted as the bad girl of politics, so to speak. Consider what is happening with the Mercy University Hospital, Cork. A sum of €5 million has been spent on a new accident and emergency department, yet it will only open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

There has been a systematic failure by the HSE to address the ongoing concerns of patients, staff and ordinary citizens. This is not make-believe; it is real. When canvassing every day on the streets of Cork, I hear horror stories about MRSA, people getting sick in hospital, lack of patient care and neglect of duty in hospitals. Senator Frances Fitzgerald spoke eloquently of different people. This is all about people. They are not statistics or stories but real people. The HSE is letting people down. Human beings deserving of dignity, treatment of care and respect are not being given these. Errors, systems failures and lack of communication should not happen but they do time and again.

Can the Minister explain the reason that after 12 years of this Government and billions of euro spent on health, the common currency used by ordinary people is the quality of our service? Will the Minister say why this is the case? She is far more intelligent than I am. Billions of euro have been spent and surely we should have a health service of which we can be proud rather than having people ringing up Joe Duffy or Neil Prendeville in Cork or going to the newspapers and having to raise funds for equipment. Why is this the case? I ask the Minister to answer my question because I certainly cannot figure it out.

I ask the Minister to accept the Health Service Executive has been a monumental failure and she should pack it away and start again. She would have cross-party support for this action.