Alan Kelly (Labour)

I am coming to that. A number of questions arise and they have been stated already. This Government must come out and state what it knew, when it knew it and how it was dealing with this issue. Were any members of the Cabinet aware of the €300 million that was being put into the bank? When were they aware of it and under what circumstances? If we do not have that information the public will continue to be cynical.

There is an excellent report in today's Irish Examiner about accident and emergency services throughout the country. Last year, 16,000 people were waiting over 12 hours for accident and emergency treatment. If anyone here can read those figures and say the Health Service Executive is moving in the right direction in terms of its strategies for the centralisation of services, particularly the closing of regional and smaller hospitals, they must be losing their mind. The figures are scandalous.

Also, the HSE cannot explain the reason it does not have a strategy for the future of the ambulance services. In Thurles recently, an 87 year old woman was waiting three and a half hours for an ambulance. That is ridiculous. We are not going forward in this area. We are going backwards and the sooner the Minister holds up her hand and says, first, that we cannot fund the changes she is proposing and, second, they are not right, the better.