John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will not be here next week so I want to take this opportunity to extend my very best wishes to Jimmy Walsh of The Irish Times in his retirement with effect from next week. He has been a good friend of this House and when no other journalist covered events here Jimmy did. I have no doubt he will have a very active retirement because anyone who knows Jimmy knows that he rarely sits still. He is always racing and chasing around the Houses. I wish him well in his retirement.

I want to raise the absolute waste of money in many aspects of the operation of the HSE. A year ago a lady asked me if I could speed up a hospital appointment. I made representations and she thanked me two weeks later when she got confirmation of her appointment. She received the confirmation eight times in eight separate letters.

Lo and behold, and I thought the practice had gone away, my son was called for an appointment next week at a hospital in the western region three times in three separate envelopes. In those two cases, there was an overspend of 550%. There is a serious waste of money and if this is replicated across the HSE we need to look at the way it does its business. I call for a debate with every Member contributing. We construe many other aspects of HSE operations as a waste of money. It is time Members in this House confronted it.