Martin Conway (Fine Gael)

I welcome the fact that the Minister for Health will come to the House on 27 October, long overdue as the visit may be. I am very concerned that the nurses and midwives at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick have found it necessary to go out on strike because of what one of them described to me as the war zone conditions in which they work. It is not appropriate or acceptable, and I call on the Leader to have a word with the Minister for Health to see whether he can personally intervene in the situation and resolve the serious difficulties faced by the nurses.

I look forward to the debate on health and I ask the Leader to make the following points to the Minister prior to the debate. We spend €14 billion a year on health and for this figure we should have a world-class health service. Unfortunately, it is not fit for purpose. The reconfiguration taking place throughout the country, particularly in the mid-west region, is not working and has been a fiasco. Co-location has also been a fiasco. The policy direction of the Health Service Executive is not appropriate. I look forward to a new, clear and well-thought out realistic approach to health services.

The HSE stands for the Health Service Executive but more realistically, many people would consider it to stand for "horrific scary and expensive". These are more appropriate. I call on the Minister when he attends the House to present us with his four-year plan, to tell us what he will do to ensure that people's loved ones are not on trolleys, to ensure that the €14 billion of taxpayers' money being spent on health is spent properly, effectively and prudently and that the end-user is the person who benefits most. We often hear the saying, "Money follows the patient"; the money should follow the patient but it is not happening in this country. It needs to happen and it needs to happen urgently.