Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

There is a public meeting in Wexford town on Sunday night regarding the services at Wexford General Hospital. At a meeting with the HSE last Monday morning, it said there would be no major reduction in services at Wexford General Hospital, yet shortly afterwards the Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, announced cutbacks of €1.5 billion for the health services next year. We should have an urgent debate on those cutbacks, because there is no way in the world one can implement cutbacks to that degree without having a significant affect on patient services across the country, especially on our acute hospitals which, quite clearly, will be in the front line of most of the cutbacks. We need an urgent debate on this issue.

We also need a debate on what is happening with the embargo on recruitment in the public service. There will be no night classes for anybody in Wexford town between now and Christmas because an individual retired and for some reason the VEC cannot or will not replace that person, even from within its current personnel. Instead it has cancelled all night classes, while all the other individuals connected with running the night classes are still expected to come into work with nothing to do. It is a complete waste of resources and is a very poor interpretation of the current embargo on public service employment. I ask the Leader to bring the appropriate Minister into the House to discuss this issue and stop this sort of nonsense from happening anywhere else in the country.

I would have liked to have seen a debate on the Lisbon treaty before the vote on 2 October. It is a pity the Leader could not facilitate that in some way, because it would have made a great impact to put on the record what we have seen and what we have done so far in regard to getting the treaty through.