Phil Prendergast (Labour)

I take issue with the comments made by the Minister of Health and Children yesterday on the three accident and emergency units for children in the Dublin region. The Minister stated these units have an average of only 20 admissions per night. It can take six people up to six hours to stabilise one child. Accident and emergency unit needs should not be measured by numbers but by dependency levels. Children can go from well to dead in six hours. The number of people attending an accident and emergency unit is not connected to the need to have professional staff doing their job correctly.

With 450 acute beds closed in the health service, it is proposed to close a further 650 beds in 2009, of which 70 are located in the Dublin and mid-Leinster region. This means 580 beds will be closed in the rest of the State. I ask the Leader to request that the Minister outline the number and location of bed closures.

The Government claims to be interested in regional development. Has this interest been extended to public service investment? It is subsidising private care for private patients in public hospitals. Savings of €100 million could be made if private patients had to pay the full economic cost of their care in public hospitals. Approximately €100 million has been spent on the National Treatment Purchase Fund at a time when hundreds of health care workers have been thrown on to the dole. It does not make sense to continue cutting front-line services. The Minister must discuss with all stakeholders where economies can be achieved without affecting front-line services. The best organisations to deal with this issue in the long term are the unions.

Consultants are set to benefit to the tune of €200 million while €10 million was considered too much to protect young people from cervical cancer. This is not an anomaly, it is an embarrassment which demonstrates how the policies of vested interests triumph over best practice in preventive health care. Front-line health services must be reprioritised carefully. If we choose to disadvantage those who are on trolleys or cut vital services, people will die. We cannot have that on our hands.