Marc MacSharry (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

On the day we have Willie Walsh of IAG speaking with the transport committee may I ask whether, if the assurances the Taoiseach has sought in terms of Heathrow and various other issues are given, it is the Labour Party's intention to support the sale of Aer Lingus? Could the House be given some clarification on that?

It is disturbing today to read in The Irish Timesthat the HSE director general wrote to the Department of Health seeking €1.4 billion in additional funding last September. We then had the Minister announcing what he believed to be a realistic budget in October, yet it was only €115 million more than the previous year despite the fact that the HSE had sought €1.4 billion. Despite that supposedly realistic budget announcement last October, the following month, the director general, Tony O'Brien, felt compelled to tell the Minister, "It has not been possible to provide funding to address the substantial majority of the demographic and critical service cost pressures, some of which carry risks from a clinical perspective". We need to clarify where these risks are. Was Mr. O'Brien referring to the 500 plus patients on hospital trolleys, which have become commonplace over the course of the last weeks and months?

Was it the fair deal scheme, where there are very substantial waiting lists? What is the situation?

How bad does the HSE anticipate things will get when it is some €1.3 million short of the funding it anticipated it would need? I do not want to be calling votes on having the Minister in here today, but I ask that an additional health budget debate be held as soon as possible, so that the Minister can outline for us how a budget announced in October was stated to be realistic, when it seems to be €1.3 billion short of the figures put forward by the HSE to his Department in September.

While the Leader may feel a Commencement debatemay be more appropriate for this issue, such is its seriousness that I would like to see a debate in the House in which all could participate. It arises from the Sligo County Council's debt of some €100 million and the central Government's treatment of the people of Sligo on the back of that debt. It is prescribing, centrally, the closing of basic First World county services, like libraries, motor taxation offices, outdoor staff and so on. It is prescribing the closure and cutting back of these services, it is prescribing more redundancies and it is treating Sligo County Council and the people of Sligo as if it were some independent republic out in the middle of the Atlantic. At the same time, there are larger councils, such as Fingal County Council, with over €100 million on deposit.

The reality is that the funding mechanism for smaller local authorities like Sligo, and there are many others in similar situations throughout the country, is not robust enough. They do not have the benefit of Dublin Airport, for example, within their commercial rate base, which Fingal does. That is just one example. We have a situation in Sligo where central Government support is essential. The attitude taken to this by the Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, and his Department in treating the people of Sligo in such a discriminatory manner, is effectively to do to us in the north west what the Germans and the ECB did to the people of Ireland in prescribing the medicine they felt should best be taken. The people of the north west are no less entitled to services than the people of the east coast, the Leader's own area, or other parts of the country. When it comes to discrimination against 65,000 of the nation's citizens in this way, it demands attention from the Houses of the Oireachtas-----