Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

While I fully accept the Minister of State's response and the response from the HSE, the logistics of someone travelling from Wexford to Cork are not practical. The natural area for Wexford should be towards Dublin. The reason I am raising this issue is not so much that I am concerned about patients from Wexford, although I am concerned about them, but rather about the overloading of the system in Cork, where there is already huge pressure on the hospital, including on urgent issues like skin cancer, with which they must deal. They now find they are coming under increasing pressure and just cannot deal with even the urgent matters because of the volume that is coming in. There is a problem with Waterford, and I will talk to the Minister of State later about why the problem arose in Waterford. It is very important the vacancies there are filled at the earliest possible date, but the hospitals in Dublin should be asked to share the problem rather than passing the buck, as is happening at the moment.