Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am not saying that and I am not saying he should leave. I am saying I would have understood. I do not want the Minister in a hospital. The last thing hospitals need is to have politicians floating around. The reality is that there are 30 admitted patients there according to the INMO at the moment.There should be 14 nurses working tonight, but I understand from the INMO that only nine are rostered and the agencies cannot provide extra staff. The Minister stated that there was no one waiting excessively in Our Lady's Hospital in Navan. I attended its accident and emergency department a year and a half ago and was waiting for half an hour.

In some areas, the problem is that people do not know what different hospitals do. If someone from Louth or Meath lives close to Drogheda, there is an inclination to assume that the hospital there will handle something. Many people do not know what Our Lady's Hospital in Navan, which effectively has a full accident and emergency unit except for some patients, or the hospital in Dundalk do. For example, people from north County Meath live closer to Dundalk than they do to Navan. It is a serious problem, but not enough is being done to address it. Tell people what services are available in each hospital and where they should go. The same applies in the case of Blanchardstown. Should people attend it or Navan if they live in the Dunshaughlin-Dunboyne area? My local area has been at the centre of health politics for a long time.

We must follow up on the solution with the current Minister, as the former Minister, Deputy Reilly, provided no news. Before the last election, Fine Gael made a specific promise to have the hospital built before the next election. The Minister can read all about it because I raised the matter with his predecessor a number of times, but he denied all knowledge of it. The Fine Gael Party made a political promise, signed by its five candidates in the general election, to build a hospital within five years. Not only that, but Fine Gael had already started the negotiations with a private sector developer which would undertake the project on a public-private partnership basis. It was madness. It was main news in the newspaper at the time, but nothing has happened. People voted for this Government because of political promises like that one that were made during a crisis that is still ongoing.

It is okay for Senator Moran because the public blamed Fianna Fáil at the last election for the problems. There is no doubt about that. However, it is being claimed that those problems are connected to the four-year delay since then-----