Pearse Doherty (Sinn Fein)

Gabhaim buíochas le Seanadóir Quinn faoin am a roinnt liom inniu ar an ábhar seo. It is clear that the HSE has failed miserably. It is no wonder that it has because it is a monster that was created by the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government as a means of insulating itself from accountability and responsibility for the delivery of health services to the people. It was also set up to underpin a grossly inequitable two-tier health system. The failure of the HSE and the shirking of responsibility by Government are illustrated most clearly by the two recent scandals. The country has rightly been shocked by the revelations of the deaths of children in State care. Responsibility for that lies with successive Governments who have presided over totally inadequate child protection services. However, the Minister has remained virtually silent on this issue. Similarly, she has hidden in the background regarding the diagnosis of miscarriage. Just yesterday evening my colleague in the Dáil, Deputy Ó Caoláin, received a reply from the Minister in which she admits the Melissa Redmond case was brought to her attention in August last year. When Ms Redmond spoke about her experience in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, she was followed by other women from across the State who had similar experiences.

The Minister sits silent on this issue, which is of great concern. She has now admitted she knew of the Redmond case since August 2009, the month following the mistaken diagnosis of miscarriage. The Minister has described how her Department and the HSE handled the Redmond case but she has given no indication of whether the wider implications were considered by them or whether they even considered the possibility that women might have had similar experiences in other hospitals.

I support the call for the Minister to explain her silence and inaction and why it was only after this issue received widespread publicity that the HSE ordered a review of its cases of the past five years. This will be a very traumatic experience for perhaps hundreds, if not thousands, of women who may find their viable pregnancies were terminated after being wrongly diagnosed as miscarriages.

Let me refer to the effect the non-replacement of front-line services is having on the health service. Today there have been up to 1,900 non-replacements of front-line service providers, nurses and midwives in the main. This resulted from the recruitment embargo imposed by the Government. If the recruitment ban is to be maintained in the health service, in excess of 6,000 further posts will remain unfilled over the next three years, with a corresponding withdrawal in the order of 3,500 acute hospital beds in the public health sector. Is it any wonder that the INMO overwhelmingly rejected the Croke Park deal?

There is great fear in Donegal South-West that the Rock Hospital in Ballyshannon, the Sheil Hospital and particularly Lifford Community Hospital face closure because they are starved of HSE funding. I ask the Minister to oversee an injection of capital to those nursing homes and community hospitals so they can continue to provide a service. Lifford hospital has provided a service since the 1790s.

There are many thousands of excellent people working in the health service under the HSE. They are doing their best to provide first-class health services but their hands are being tied by savage Government cutbacks and a disastrous health policy that maintains a two-tier health system.

The health system must be replaced with a new system of care based on need, and need alone. The HSE must be replaced with a network of community health partnerships, as proposed by Sinn Féin. The first step is to remove the totally discredited Government once and for all.