Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will table an amendment to the Order of Business with regard to the reports in TheSunday Business Post about accident and emergency departments. An interesting fact has emerged to the effect that, following over 20 years of reports and consultants being asked to consider issues on behalf of different Ministries in the UK, no report disagreed with the British Government's position.It is an amazing statistic when one thinks about it. I am sure the statistic would not be much different in Ireland but as Mark Twain pointed out, "Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable." The facts of the report from the trauma steering group which was set up by then Minister for Health, the current Minister for Social Protection and by all accounts the future leader of Fine Gael, Deputy Leo Varadkar, are that the nine emergency departments in Cavan, Naas, Portiuncula, Kilkenny, Mullingar, Clonmel, Cork's Mercy Hospital and Portlaoise would be shut down and their patients would be moved, along with any future patients, into an already overcrowded and chaotic emergency department system.

It must be borne in mind there is a lack of joined-up thinking here. Currently some of those hospitals are actually advertising for consultants for their emergency departments at the same time as a steering group is proposing that those very departments would be shut down. Would a consultant, in all seriousness, take up a post when a death notice is being served on these departments and with 400 trolleys plus per day already in the system of the emergency department wards? That is why we are pushing for an amendment to the Order of Business that the Minister would come to the House today to discuss this issue and the state of our chaotic health system.

From start to finish emergency departments and our emergency ambulance service around the State - and the Leader would know with regard to Cork and Kerry - are hugely under-funded. People are not getting the emergency treatment they require in time and therefore spend longer in hospital, spend more time in recovery and tie up more beds in the long term. This report, although shocking, is a great credit to The Sunday Business Postfor highlighting the fact that a bad situation is now being made chaotic. The chances of people taking up posts in those nine hospitals, the emergency departments of which have been earmarked for closure, will make that situation virtually impossible to rectify. The report in itself will cause chaos in the emergency departments in the hospitals that I have outlined.

I seek leave from the House to introduce an amendment to the Order of Business to allow for No. 18 to be introduced. It is the National Anthem Protection of Copyright and Related Rights (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill to allow for-----